Quantum Education

A new worldview calls for a new structure for education. How can 2000 year old categories still be best for 2009 realities?

Not that there's anything wrong with art, science, philosophy, science, government, economics...as areas of learning.

It's just that by learning them as separate areas of thought, we miss their essence.

Unlike Plato, Kant, Shakespeare, Newton, and Adam Smith, we know the essence of reality. Physicists have (more or less) (mathematically) found what exists in the nucleus of the atom, and how the atoms interact with other atoms to build up to the objects we sense.

Scientists have also found mathematical patterns whichc explain much reality at the human and societal level.

Since the aim of education is ultimately to find truth, it is incumbent on us to be sure that at some point that is happening. The truth is that, at its core, reality is a fuzzy cloud of ethreal mathematical metaphors.

OK, that's a mouthful.

But if true, it certainly calls for a rethinking of K-12 and college level curricula.

Not that there's anything wrong with students and adults contemplating the age old questions probed by Plato, Shakespeare, Rousseau, and Sartre.

It's just that we can go deeper and farther.

If reality begins as a swirl of multidimensional fields and probability waves which ultimately ( and mysteriously) emerge as entangled atoms, molecules, substances, cells, genes, neurons, and us, we need some new learning structures to allow this knowledge to enter our culture.

If the natural world is better described by fractal sturctures than classical, that should be part of the educational paradigm as well. And if complex structures (like us) which emerge from simpler stuctures (like quarks) cannot be mathematically compared with those simpler structures, we should be aware of that.

Now if you made it this far, you must be thinking, "Wow, that sounds deep".

Sure, but not necessarily difficult to make part of our national curriculum.

Here's how it might go:

Grades

1-6

Reading, Particle Physics, Writing, Mathematics, Arithmetic, Complexity Science .... ....

7-12

The 3 R's, Calculus for Dummies, History, Deep Science for Dummies, Sociology, Entanglement
Government, Chaos, Economics, Complexity, Arts, Transcendence .... ....

Higher Education

Liberal Arts, Physics, Business, Science, Engineering, Art, Economics, Ultimate Concepts
Government, Complexity II, Arts, Actuarial, Law, Public Policy, Unity ... ...

Of course, detailed course content will be critical to a transition to a joint classical-quantum curriculum. Particle physics as introduced to gradeschoolers will be conceptual...what are fields, waves, particles...at an understandable level.

Deep science for junior high and high schoolers will involve beginning to see the connection between the matenatical and scientific structures whihc have ben found to remarkably represent the reality at the core of the atom.

Philosophy at the college level will probe the relationships between metaphors utilized by classical thinkers (Platonic Forms, Kantian Categories, Hegelian Spirit, Sartrean Essence, Smith's Invisible Hand, Rousseau's General Will...) and the metaphors of modern science and mathematics (fields, waves, groups, spaces, fractals, particles, dimensions, lagrangians, symmetry...)

Yes we can.

Lee