Quantity v Quality--Knowing v Understanding

[coberst]

Quantity v Quality—Knowing v Understanding

I have been for some time trying to understand the meaning of the word ‘understand’. I can remember reading the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and after reading some reviews I recognized that the book is about ‘quality’. I must admit that I do not remember much else.

Metaphors seem to be necessary for communicating understanding regarding such concepts as mind, consciousness, morality, understanding, self, etc.

I think that the metaphors ‘knowing is quantity’ and ‘understanding is quality’ are useful for distinguishing the difference between knowing and understanding. Of course the concept ‘quality’ is a rather elusive concept it self.

I have been studying the concepts ‘reification’ (to regard something abstract as a material thing) and ‘commodification’ (to turn an intrinsic value into an object of commerce), which are concepts studied by the soft sciences in an attempt to understand the nature of capitalism. In that process I came across this Marx quote:



“Through the subordination of man to the machine the situation arises in which men are effaced [to cause to vanish] by their labor. In which the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at most an incarnation of time. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything: hour for hour, day for day…”

I think that the general idea contained in this Marx quote might be said for education it self. Understanding no longer matters. Knowing alone decides everything. Education is commodified and the product of education is a commodity (credentials and a data base).

One Amazon reviewer said that this was his favorite "We want to make good time, but for us now this measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make a shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."

I think that our years of schooling serve a useful purpose because those years prepare us to be good workers. However, in our adult years “when you make a shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."