Hi Friends,
Welcome to the 30th edition of the Practical Polymath!
This week I went to a dinner with other writers hosted by Foster, truly one of the best communities of writers out there. We went around the table and everyone shared an idea they were currently obsessed with. People pitched in and every single idea sparked a bonfire of thoughts. I was reminded of something I lose sight of in the crunch of daily routine: the most fertile ground for inspiration is the minds of others. Conversation is where great ideas grow.
Until next week,
Florian
The Name of Things
“What’s this?”, my two-year-old queries pointing vigorously. “That’s a dishwasher”, I reply.
“And, what’s this?”. “That’s the sky”, I say.
At first, I felt a great deal of satisfaction being able to answer this barrage of questions. What a thrill to introduce my inquisitive alien to the fundamentals of earthly life. But then I felt a darker mood settle in. I wasn’t really teaching him anything. All I was doing was blurting out labels. Dishwasher. Sky. Car. Banana. Rabbit.
It was him who was giving me a lesson. My knowledge about the world was mostly made of labels.
In a now famous interview he gave in the seventies, Richard Feynman recounts a childhood memory of a little boy his age who mocked him because he didn’t know the name of a particular bird.
“Doesn’t your father teach you anything?'' the boy said to little Feynman.
But Richard’s father had in fact taught him the name of that bird. He even taught him how to say it in many different languages. And once he was done with his lesson, he said to Richard: “When you know all the names of that bird in every language, you know nothing, but absolutely nothing, about the bird”.
Naming something and knowing something are two very different things.
Why does this matter?
The ability to label all sorts of things gives us the illusion of knowledge. I can already notice the feeling of pride on my son’s face when he recognizes something he’s able to name. “Look daddy, it’s a digger!” (a common type of bird often seen pecking at concrete in the streets of Brooklyn).
As my son grows older, I want to balance this cute but pernicious “label pride” with a genuine curiosity for the questions that hide behind the labels. How does the dishwasher work? What’s the sky made of? Why do we eat bananas?
It is not only a matter of nurturing my son’s curiosity. It is the dismantling of my own ignorance that is at stake. For behind the bars of every label casually assigned, there is knowledge waiting to be freed.
Weekly Wisdom
☀️ The Happiness Recipe: Stacks of books continue to be written about how to live a happier and more meaningful life. The more I read ancient philosophy, the more I feel like we’ve figured it out a long time ago. The video below is an entertaining introduction to the philosophy of Epicurus. His recipe for happiness was surprisingly simple and yet totally incompatible with our modern way of life: live on a commune with your friends, opt for a self-sufficient lifestyle and spend a lot of time meditating.
⏳ How we Perceive Time: Why does time speed up as we get older? Or why does a holiday whiz by and yet feels long when you look back? In this piece, Maria Popova discusses “Time Warped”, a book about how our mind actively influences our perception of time.
🍜 Food for Thought: Natalie Cruz is a home-chef and food nerd on a mission to travel the world by eating at a different New York restaurant every week. Check out her newsletter “Food for Thought” and follow her culinary adventures. I particularly liked this piece where she talks about how to get out of your culinary comfort zone and why you shouldn’t always rely on restaurant reviews to decide where to go out for dinner (oh, and make sure you scroll down to the picture of the giant donut).
Lateral Thought
“Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship.”
Epicurus
The Name of Things
It's very true that having a name for something doesn't tell you anything about it (unless it's a scientific name for a plant or animal, in which case it tells you what it's related to). I used to teach invasive species management to people who spent a lot of time in the outdoors but often weren't formally educated. One of the challenges was to show them that they had a lot of knowledge that wasn't tied up in knowing names for things or big words. Having said that, naming is helpful for sorting out information about things in your head, and for communicating about things
I really, really like your newsletter, Florian. Thank you for making my life better!