I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes a distinction between practical skills ('know-how') and deeper understanding or awareness ('know-what').
Norbert Wiener's quote highlights the contemporary challenge faced by individuals, particularly in America, where proficiency in technical skills ('know-how') often overshadows the necessary comprehension of broader concepts and meanings ('know-what'). This suggests a superficial engagement with knowledge, prompting reflection on the importance of cultivating deeper insights to foster more meaningful lives and contributions.
In practice
In a speech about education reform, this quote can be used to highlight the need for deeper learning.
In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.
The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. _x000D_ A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.
Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.
Those who know the TRUTH are not equal to those who love it.
The most important things must be said simply, for they are spoiled by bombast; whereas trivial things must be described grandly, for they are supported only by aptness of expression, tone and manner.
Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but less by assimilation than by friction.
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
True meditation can never be done with the mind. Very often we make a mistake when we say that we are meditating in the mind and utilising the mind. Real meditation is done in the psychic being and in the soul. It goes hand in hand with flaming aspiration, the burning flame that wants to climb up to the Highest.
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