Disinterested Knowledge

I began the self-actuated learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."

I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.

Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. Perhaps it is both means and end as some have surmised. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ?'disinterested knowledge' as similar to ?'pure research', as compared to ?'applied research'. Pure research seeks to know reality unconnected to any specific application.

Most people have a difficult time understand what I mean by disinterested knowledge. This is my attempt to make that phrase a little more comprehensible.

I know little about foreign languages but I do know enough to recognize that one of the problems in translation from one language to another is the fact that each language has words that many other languages do not have. I suspect one can understand a great deal about society X by studying the words they have that are not in society Y and society Z.

I use the ambiguous and stumbling phrase ?'disinterested knowledge' because I cannot find in the English language a more appropriate word that better carries the meaning I am attempting to communicate. I suspect one can understand a good bit about The United States because this is a fact.

I guess every citizen of every nation seeks "the good life". Americans, I think, consider the good life to consist of producing and consuming more than the neighbor does. The phrase ?'disinterested knowledge' does not fit easily within this frame. To understand this ambiguous and stumbling phrase I shall have to broaden the meaning of the good life.

The dictionary defines ?'instrumental' to be "serving as a means, agent, or tool." Americans are convinced that education and knowledge can be instruments for the good life if education and knowledge facilitate the maximizing of production and consumption. I think that disinterested knowledge can also be an instrument of the good life if we broaden the scope of what we consider to be the good life.

Aristotle declares, in the very first sentence of one of his documents, "Metaphysics", that "all men by nature desire to know". Socrates declares that " the unexamined life is not worth living". I am convinced that the individual who engages in the effort to understand the world and the self is gaining a bit of the good life.

If the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker use their brains only to further their particular careers they may gain the good life by maximizing production and consumption. However, I am convinced that they can also participate in the good life by gaining knowledge and understanding about life and themselves. I am broadening the meaning of the good life to include the intrinsic value inherent in self-actualized learning.

This quotation of Carl Rogers might illuminate my meaning of disinterested knowledge.

I want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!"