When the only tool you have is a hammer all problems begin to resemble nails.
In the history of the world, human beings have been thoroughly invested in solving problems. Many a time, this is done through either one or multiple ways. However, can a single approach do justice to what we are seeking or does looking at it through multiple perspectives give us a more precise understanding. Adversely could one way do more justice than multiple approaches. The law of the instrument, In simple words, suggests that people generally favour using a single approach and staying in their conformity zone over exploring different approaches to a situation. In terms of the ways of knowing it suggests that people unconsciously use a predominant way of knowing over opening up to other ones that may not resonate with them as powerfully. The big question is, to what extent are the ways if knowing limited,’ and I will be exploring this topic in the areas of mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences and the arts.
Srinivasa Ramanujan is considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. In the words of mathematician G.H Hardy he could be compared to only Euler and Jacobi.’ In his first letter written to hardy Ramanujan came up with multiple theorems a few which were known but many which seemed very unlikely to believe. however, he did this entirely intuitively and without proofs. He was extremely religious and when he was asked how he came up with some of his extraordinary works, he stated, ‘the answer came to my mind.’ This is closely associated with the ‘fast mode’ of thinking which basically means to solve problems intuitively. Many of Ramanujan’s formulae and theorems were proved over the next 40 years after his death. This intuitive method of thinking helped escalating the discovery of many mathematical wonders which may not have been discovered as quickly without this method. This method is used everyday as well since when we are asked to multiply 2 simple numbers we do it without thinking as opposed to 2 slightly larger numbers. It was the same concept except Ramanujan would do this on a much deeper scale.
However, math is considered to be rooted in logical reasoning and Ramanujan never initially showed proofs for his works. For this reason, many of his theorems were not accepted in the math community. In the same letter Ramanujan had given a formula which finds the number of prime numbers less than a certain value ‘x’. This was proved wrong by Littlewood, another mathematics as the error kept becoming larger as the size of the number increased. This is a drawback of using only intuition as his way of knowing as we know Ramanujan was only heavily involved with intuition. This example itself is an example of how intuition can be a more liberal and faster way of knowing while used alone and in this case it is true, but however if looked at with other ways of knowing such as reason it could be more accurate. In this case the hammer for Ramanujan was his intuition and the nail was the problem. This leads us to ask the question that ‘to what extent is intuition be effective in acquiring knowledge.’
Education is one of the largest sectors in the world today and the art of essay writing is mainly what we are judged on. Essays determine your grades and what college we may get in to. However essays are subjective and opinions may vary. A recent article shows that state schools are now using artificial intelligence in order to correct essays. This suggests that the sole way of knowing essays are now being corrected is reason. This is extremely advantageous as it puts all students on a level playing field and ensures that personal bias does not effect the grading. Using this way of knowing is the fastest method and essays that may have taken hours to grade would now be done in a matter of minutes. Also this helps in dealing with the issue of plagiarism. However, many a time an essay is very heavily effected by emotion even when it comes to something as simple as the style of writing and no matter how efficient the algorithm a computer cannot possibly understand a human. Also an essay may be opinionated so in this case reason may actually be counter-productive. There can also be multiple viewpoints on a certain essay and hence two people may correct them individually differently. It is one of the rare things that cannot be quantified hence a computer may not be the most effective way to correct. A human would use a mix of reason emotion and other ways of knowing while correcting essays. The teacher would have guidelines such as a mark scheme but would ultimately grade it himself hence by integrating the 2 we may get the best result and we must also remember that teachers are trained individuals in this field. This makes me question, ‘to what extent is artificial intelligence reliable.’ In todays day and age where we look at the possibilities of computers taking over in many fields, it is possible that the AI may be efficient in certain ways and has its drawbacks and so does a teacher who would use multiple ways of knowing. It is clear that the AI is basically a more efficient hammer in solving the problem of having to read and correct lengthy essays. However the personal touch that a human brings and understanding to different perspectives cannot be done by an AI. If done properly this could be an effective hammer to the nail.
I have been playing guitar for around 5 years now. My favourite part of playing the guitar is improvising which is essentially plying what I feel like over a certain track. Initially I would only use a certain scale to improvise. This is a method which would make me use only reason as my way of knowing to write a solo. This would make it less time consuming for me and all my solos would have a similar style to it. It made my playing style a little unique from the generic way of playing.however all my solos sounded the same and gave a very non versatile monotonous tone to my playing. As I grew as a musician I began learning about new scales and other theory which gave me a versatile style of playing. By knowing all this I could solo in almost any style. Having all this knowledge strengthened my style and I found variety which made the solos more appealing. However, my solos sounded more like a music exam than a performance. By integrating all these other styles I lost my originality and I could play in every style except mine. However as I matured as a musician I began familiarising myself with the fretboard and began integrating emotion in to my style. This happened after I stopped professional tutoring. By using a mix of emotion, reasoning and a little intuition I now solo entirely originally as I’m using what I learnt but playing my own thing which is essentially what improvisation is all about. By gaining experience I effectively improved my style of playing. However sometimes I begin thinking while playing which usually ruins it. Having all these other ways of knowing sometimes causes me to think while playing and that has a negative effect on my playing. Overall, using one way took me to certain point but it had its limitations and using multiple ways of knowing helped improve my style but also has its drawbacks and both of these ]can be applied to different situations like whether I’m giving an exam or doing an impromptu performance.
Although I have only focused on a limited number of AOKs this can be applicable to many other areas of knowledge such as ethics and history. One perspective in many cases can be very useful and one way of knowing can be powerful enough to effectively explore a situation. However we must appreciate the limitations of the ways of knowing and although all ways of knowing may not be able to be applied to all situations it is usually beneficial to use multiple ways of knowing to gain a broader, deeper understanding of a topic. Even though one way of knowing may be the most efficient way of solving a problem there is no harm in considering all others as it will only expand your knowledge. It is important to move away from the hammer and move out of your comfort zone and maybe try and use other tools to solve the same problem rather than using the same tool to solve different problems.