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The meaning of Sapience, thoughts on self education, participation, blog, products and services, history, and contact information. |
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"Sapience" is the quality of being knowledgeable, intelligent, or wise. Development of this quality in the highest sense is this site's reason for being. "Knowledge base" seemed to be the best term to describe its structure and content.
The desire to read, study, and learn has been one of my governing desires since my earliest memories. When I was bored in school, I browsed the textbook. If there was nothing else to read, I went to the dictionary and the encyclopedia. When I couldn't afford to pay tuition, I went to the library.
I was in High school from 1972 to 1976. I found that I was good at mathematics, algebra, and logic, and after a brief introduction, began programming in BASIC on the school's IBM timesharing system, using a teletype machine. I decided to try for a career in chemical engineering, and got a good foundation of calculus based physics and university level chemistry.
After not quite a year working in surveying, I spent two years in Bolivia and gained some fluency in Spanish.
In the early 1980s when I couldn't raise tuition, I began a more serious program of independent study at the university library. I was most interested on mathemematics and began outlining and comparing various texts on the subject, concentrating on logic, finite set theory, and the foundations of mathematical structure. I had limited access to an Apple II computer, and tried writing programs, although without any clue about structured programming, my efforts were messy and unsatisfying. I began digging into the operating system and learning 6502 assembly language programming. In other areas, I found myself increasingly frustrated by the fragmentation of knowledge and found myself asking questions whose answer required specialist knowledge that I couldn't get quickly. I began to perceive the interconnectedness and unity of all areas of knowledge. The ideas behind the organization of knowledge that is used on this web site began to occur to me, and I began experimenting with ways to implement a vision I could not communicate in sound bites.
In the late 1980s, I shifted away from the Apple II to the Commodore 64. Sometime in this period, I began working on three-valued logic, with ideas that were prompted by a paper I had read that attempted to use modal logic to analyze a philosophical problem.I found an important clue in the work of Jan Lukasiewicz, and found that his three valued logic was tantalizingl close to working as a modal logic, but it lacked the important rules of inference of ordinary classical logic. but wasn I was also trying to implement my knowledge base in programming, with progress quite slow and frustrating. I managed to get back into school, and reviewed my calculus and physics and suppemented my logic with soem formal study. I als obtained an Atari ST computer, which required a shift away from the 6502 to the Motorola 68000 family, and I was still interested in assembly languages, but I didn't have a compiler or interpreter to do any other programming.
During the early 1990s when the internet took off. It was growing and itns methods and technology improving faster than I could keep up. I finally picked up a used IBM PC, and upgraded it to an XT equivalent, and struggled with IBM assembly programming. I eventually upgraded to a 3086-based machine and began to teach myself C programming. I also decided that the I decided that the problems of putting my knowledge base in a single computer were too formidable and began working on a hyperlinked version.
I made a little progress on the three valued logic, only to find that what I had done had mostly been anticipated by Lukasiewicz (not surprisingly, since my version was based on his). However, as I was reviewing the literature, trying to find out why it didn't work as a modal logic, I found that most three valued logics only considered a biconditional (If A then B and if B then A), but that most of these relations fell short of a truth functional equivalence (A and B have the same truth value). I could define an equivalence relation, which got me a lot closer to what I was aiming for. It then occurred to me that I could define a strict conditional in the same way, and all at once, everything came together. I knew why Lukasiewicz logic was insufficent as a logic, and the formal system satisfied the axioms of the Lewis S5 system of modal logic.
In 1988, I again returned to school, with intentions of getting a degree in computer science, and picked up a little Java, more C++, and a little bit of Windows programming and discrete math, which I had already studied before. I also obtained a Pentium-II based computer, the closest thing to a techically up-to-date system I had ever had. My studies of computing were going poorly due to personal, emotional, and family struggles, so I switched to a different school trying to finish a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, which also came short. I also made my first attempt at publishing my findings in logic, which were rejected with a disappointingly superficial review.
During about 2002, I began putting an early version of this knowledge base on the web, attempting to find interest in my logic, and analyzing my collection of science and mathematics textbooks. In December 2003, this version of the site went up. From February 2004 through most of March 2004, the site was down due to financial difficulties. From June 2004 to Sept 2006, the site was up but inactive due to other personal difficulties. In Sept 2006, development resumed (with a couple of month-long hiatuses in March and May) until the present (Sept 2008) In the process, the history section has developed more than anything else, but I'm trying not to neglect the other areas.
Education is a journey. In the beginning, there are the pioneers of knowledge, who are exploring an unknown wilderness. There are dead ends, thickets, bogs, sharp rocks and sticks, pitfalls and traps, irritating pests, and sometimes dangerous predators. All of these physical dangers have intellectual equivalents.
As the explorers learn the safe paths through an unknown wilderness, they, or others, may take the trouble to make things easier for themselves or others who follow. They make maps and guides. They follow and mark routes that avoid the dangers, or they clear out some of them, and organize a subject so that it becomes easier to learn and master. Some become guides, leading others, singly or in groups, through the wilderness.
Eventually the wilderness becomes civilized; there are roads and even highways, along which crowds of people travel. Formal education, then, consists of groups of studends led by a teacher traveling together along such a marked path. Often, just off the well marked path, there is still wilderness. Solitary exploratory behavior such as running ahead, lagging behind, and taking side trips is discuraged. Groups progress in a linear fashion: they don't often have the luxury of backtracking to review a particular point. Finally, they ignore many possibly interesting side roads.
Furthermore, if knowledge is like a countryside, there are towns and villages. Those who reside in or work in a given area are more or less familiar with the local dangers, and know how to avoid them, where as a newcomer and a stranger does not. Much of this knowledge is not included in guides. Veteran explorers use guides and maps, but they also know their limitations.
This guide, too, has limitations. It is incomplete and always will be. although it is in many respects a living, growing thing. It offers a unique combination of linear organization, building from the simple to the more complex, and the freedom to jump around. For one who gets lost following the crosslinks, there is always a way back to a known starting point. Since everyone brings different interests, experience, needs, and willingness to expend effort to learn, I cannot possibly prescribe a curriculum or course of study. The best I can do is provide a starting point and suggest ways to connect what you aready do know to what you would like to know.
Self education is not for the idle or the casual. The analogy to exploration is quite real: It can be lonely, difficult, frustrating, and filled with nuisances and setbacks. Progress is often slow, and it's easy to get lost and confused. It is one thing to read a book, something else to write one. It is one thing to read a map, something else to make one. It is one thing to become familiar with a subject, something else to master it. Although this site may be helpful, in the end, learning is useless unless it can be translated into action.
I invite you to browse. Explore. Think about things. Ask questions. Take responsibility for your own education. Be sapient.
If you find errors on this site, please let me know: I am only human, and it is human to err and not know it. If you have a differing opinion, let me know: I've been wrong before and no doubt, will be again. If you have a question, ask: I may know more than I have been able to put on the site. If you don't find what you want, let me know, and your request will get a vote in the development process. If you have a suggestion, make it: Your idea may be better than anything I could come up with. And, if by chance you have something nice to say about the site, it won't hurt my feelings.
Although this is primarily an educational site, it needs to be as self supporting as possible. There are three possibilities I am prepared to offer, and ideas for others are gestating.
One is the possibility of providing space for advertising, provided that it is on a reserved "commercials" page and visitors have the choice to see it or not. At present my advertising policies are unwritten and informal.
There are other more specialized subjects I have some experience with, which the site has not caught up to. I have several years of experience tutoring algebra and trigonometry at the high school and college level, up to and including calculus.
I am also willing to consult on the organization of smaller, more specialized knowledge bases.
For more detailed information or arrangements, please contact me at the e-mail address given below.
Separate from the main Sapience Knowledge Base, one page includes a summary of my findings in three valued modal logic. I have also begun work on a Poor Man's Guide to Computing. Another group of pages has my Science Fiction universe, using the setting of Traveller.
Really, I'm not all that hard to find on the web. You can google me under either my own name, or my multi-purpose Internet alias: Confutus.
I have been discussing updates to the site in a blog (indeplearn.blogspot.com) This includes a running account of updates to the site, along with personal opinions and commentaries. I moderate the comments, to prevent comment spam.
You may also visit the Independent Learning Forum, register, and participate in the discussion.
TOCoons at gmail dot com