Flatland

 I just finished reading the book that was given to the members of LTU’s class of 2010. The World is Flat is a collection of observations and conclusions about what it will be like to live and work in the 21st century. The ideas presented, which are already showing themselves to carry truth, are of especial importance to the class of 2010 and to its successors. The purpose of this, my essay, is not to offer a “book report” about The World is Flat. Rather, I would like to select one of Thomas Friedman’s conclusions and worry it to see what meaning it has for students at LTU.

To compete in the flat world, Thomas Friedman concludes that individuals will need at minimum two abilities: pattern recognition and complex problem solving. He offers that for parents striving to prepare their children for the flat world, or societies seeking to survive in it, these two abilities have become essential. To my mind, this is self evident. What is less evident is how to teach and learn pattern recognition (PR) and complex problem solving (CPS). That question being posed, I am encouraged because I believe that LTU is uniquely positioned to teach and nurture both.
 What is meant by CPS is intuitive and perhaps easy to envision in a curriculum. It sounds like engineering and while engineering it certainly is; it is also a critical skill for many other disciplines. CPS is the process of finding answers after the right questions have been posed and the appropriate rigor and tools have been brought to bear. However, “posing the right question” is where CPS reveals its dependence on PR. Put another way, “It is the question and not the always provisional answer that is the soul of science.” Donald Peattie wrote this in 1932, the year that LTU was founded.

While CPS appears (deceptively) straight forward, PR doesn’t. PR is perhaps more universal and more profound. PR is a process, albeit it an elusive process. It is knowledge that we have, but that we have difficulty sharing, or explaining to someone else. It can be as prosaic as recognizing a friend a great distance away. Michael Polyani called this “tacit knowledge.” Or, it can be as ingenious as Einstein recognizing the common threads running through sets of contractions in the physics of light, energy, and motion; posing the essential questions and then, by CPS, changing the world. Whether we possess PR skills in small or great measure, we should crave them because with PR we make sense of our world, just as Einstein used PR to make sense of his.

PR can bring us recognition of universal truths or reassure us with individual fundamental beliefs. It crosses all manner of boundaries; which is to say that patterns can be discovered or created in areas as diverse as music, chemistry, art, physics, poetry, history, philosophy, medicine, and of course mathematics, which in itself is nothing more than the language of patterns.

If you would learn PR, seek it in all that you do. The LTU College of A&S offers a myriad of paths. I find the patterns of Shakespeare as informative as the progress of maggots in a crime scene. I find the poetic wisdom (which is one way of describing time-tested patterns) of Wallace Stevens as informative as the startling clarity of the chemical periodic table. I find both essential in living my life.

PR thus exercised brings understanding. Of course, it may be possible to understand wrong, but that is where CPS brings its own strength to the fore. PR enables us to formulate the idea and the question. CPS allows us to find and test the answer. Whether the questions and answers reside in one of the aforementioned disciplines or in others, the effort to formulate questions and then bring the questions and answers together is the province of educated life. This is what LTU offers.

So, whether you seek your patterns in the College of Arts & Sciences, or the Colleges of Engineering or Architecture, or even Management, learn pattern recognition and honor it with complex problem solving. This hard work will repay you with a fuller life, a richer range of possibilities, and a greater ability to compete in the emerging flat world.

Jwgibbs124@yahoo.com