Learning During Snowdays
Being a lifelong learner means not only learning during all of one's life, but also being open to learning while in all the experiences of life. These past few days have given the perfect opportunity to both play in the gift of snow and meditate on a lesser known intellectual delight—Johannes Kepler’s The Six Cornered Snowflake. Oh, had western science gone the way of Kepler and his reflection on the snowflake. Meditation, immersion, and synthesis over dissection and analysis as the way of truly knowing and understanding.
When was the last time you read a scientific tract that was truly inter and cross disciplinary? This world class astronomer alludes to or quotes Epicurus, Archimedes, Plato’s Timaeus, Aristophanes’ Clouds and Birds, Psalm 147:16, Virgil’s Georgics, Euclid, Fibonacci, and Aesop’s Fables. In addition, more than once he acknowledges the “Creator” and easily philosophizes about the perfection, beauty, and nobility of the rhombic figure in the form of the amazing cold treat, the snowflake.
On Friday past, when the Woods family went out into the snowfall and played as we slid down the hill on makeshift sleds, as we made and threw snowballs at one another, as we laughed in the beautifully wonderous white world, and as we made a snowman, actually snowgirl, we enjoyed the goodness of God's creation and the delightful gift of snow that points to so much more than mere frozen dust specs.
When was the last time you read a scientific tract that was truly inter and cross disciplinary? This world class astronomer alludes to or quotes Epicurus, Archimedes, Plato’s Timaeus, Aristophanes’ Clouds and Birds, Psalm 147:16, Virgil’s Georgics, Euclid, Fibonacci, and Aesop’s Fables. In addition, more than once he acknowledges the “Creator” and easily philosophizes about the perfection, beauty, and nobility of the rhombic figure in the form of the amazing cold treat, the snowflake.
Kepler moves easily from biology, beehives, math, pomegranates, physics, snail shells, geometry, snowflakes, and chemistry as he reflects on the possibilities and probabilities of origins, causes, and ends of the tiny white matter that I and loved ones played in for hours. What characterized play that day and the marvelous little book by Kepler is a spirit of wonder and curiosity that should be the defining tone of all learning. When we lose that and tend toward the arrogant, narrow specializations that typify modern education, then much more is lost than gained.
Oh that God might raise up a Kepler or two or three that could help get the world and all learning back on track and that would yield the kind of fruit that Kepler and others like him have yielded. Or maybe, I should just invite those of Keplerian heart, mind and spirit to start a movement calling others of kindred soul to wonder and curiosity.
On Friday past, when the Woods family went out into the snowfall and played as we slid down the hill on makeshift sleds, as we made and threw snowballs at one another, as we laughed in the beautifully wonderous white world, and as we made a snowman, actually snowgirl, we enjoyed the goodness of God's creation and the delightful gift of snow that points to so much more than mere frozen dust specs.
May all of your days of lifelong learning be characterized by joyous enchantment while we work and play in the fields of our Lord. May our senses be engaged in celebration of all the good, the true, and the beautiful while living in the here and now anticipating what is come. May we always embrace all blessings that arrive in various forms bestowed upon us.