In relation to my earlier post on "what is learning" and the notion that "learning" is association of things, I am thinking about another common way of expressing knowledge about something.
If you are learning or have knowledge about a concept, object, event and if we want to convey that to others, w take different approaches - give a definition (summary description) of what it is, a detailed explanation with examples, demonstrate it by building it, showing examples and counter examples, may be explaining the experience/feeling/emotion and so on.
It is very interesting to note that many philosophers and also in religious/spiritual epics, the definition and descriptions is given in a strange way. One may not explain the "thing" by telling what it is. But, you would narrate it by telling "what it is not". It is very interesting why this approach is adopted especially by philosophers to explain complex phenomena which are very difficult to comprehend/understand. One such example is explaining what is Universe, purpose of life, God, etc. These are best explained by what it is NOT. Because, (as I read somewhere), the moment you try try to define them in some way, it becomes so limited or boxed and hence, becomes wrong/imperfect. One may not be able to explain all aspects of it, but then one can say, what it is not, by citing negative examples. So, the approach is to say, what it is NOT - definition by negation - so that it is still OK even if we don't cover all. Also, it expects the audience to have vast amount of knowledge of peripheral subjects otherwise it doesn't make sense to say this is not X or Y if the audience are not aware of X and Y.
So, a good observer or leaner knows more by understanding the difference between one new thing with everything he/she already knows and this knowledge of difference is the definition of the new thing (weird or upside down, right?).
I am struggling to give a good example of this "definition by negation".
Say, that you saw a strange animal in the forest. You may say that it is not a Cat, but has four legs, fur, and short, but not whiskers, It is not a Tiger as it was moving very slow, ....., it is not a Rabbit as it was eating some worms or birds.
By explaining what it is NOT, we are narrating some attributes, if not all - by way of discrimination - a process of elimination. This implies that we know more about the negative examples without which such elimination steps do not make sense.
Would appreciate better examples than mine !!!
