Analysis / Synthesis

Homelab Notebook #04

2024-11-26: I’ve retrofitted a few Homelab Notebook posts for consistency, including this one, for a more consistent format.

This post includes:

1. Administrivia

2. Resource Directory

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1. Adminstrivia

All knowledge is connected.

This is a fundamental belief with profound implications. If it’s all connected, the deeper you go, the more of it you feel. You don’t just pick up arbitrary trivia; you get more enmeshed. Life gets thicker.

In a world of infinite content, seeing the connections is both harder and easier. Skibidi Toilet and The Republic are connected. iOS 18 release notes and the astrolabe are connected. When we understand, we connect it to ourselves. We update our worldview, which changes the way we act.

The philosopher Charlotte Mason described education as the “science of relations” and emphasized the differences between learning by analysis (”to break apart”) and synthesis (”to bring together”). In a famous analogy, she compares the approaches to two ways of eating an apple.

If we approach [the apple] synthetically, we take it as we find it — in its state of wholeness and completeness — and eat it. Once eaten, it is digested, absorbed, and becomes part of us. If we approach it analytically, we take it apart — not in a natural way, which is merely a smaller portion (here is half an apple!), but rather, here is the fiber, here are the vitamins, here is a bit of water, and some sugar.¹

Both sets of food may have the same nutritional content, but the latter lacks any of the apple-ness, the relations that made it all come together as an apple in the first place.

Approaching an apple synthetically is to apprehend the whole. It’s a fruit; it tastes good. It’s a thing to enjoy. Conversely, the analytical mind sees it as something to weigh, measure, and compare. It loves statistics: Did you know the average American eats 10 pounds of apples annually?²

Neat! But what does it signify?

I’m finding a consistent theme as I dig into classical education: education is philosophy-first, details-second. Teaching through synthesis orients children to the whole rather than the parts. Mason’s goal—and ours—is to feed the most vibrant ideas to the child so they may “feast” and be nourished. It’s the exact opposite of checking boxes on a curriculum rubric.

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Analysis does have its place — behind synthesis.

The danger to both students and adults is that they may fail to recognize the thing itself. In an abstracted world, it isn’t simple to recognize that the chicken in “chicken nuggets” is the same one that goes “bawk-bawk”. Break things down too far, and you end up estranged.

On the other hand, analytical reasoning is a powerful tool for managing systems that ape brains can’t comprehend, such as large businesses. Professional analysts can break down complex factors into a few key drivers that can be reasoned about. Since we can’t understand the reality of the company, a model is the next best thing.

But good leaders don’t just analyze; they synthesize.³

Leaders quickly say, “The numbers look off,” because they have stitched together an intuition of their specific business from a broad set of sources, such that they can detect deviations from it immediately, like spotting a pimple on your partner’s face.

The best analysts I’ve worked with do the same thing, except they apply their general expertise to act as strategists, directing attention to the areas most important to the larger whole.

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All knowledge is connected, but you must learn to make the connections.

History education taught synthetically builds up into a coherent narrative. It will include characters, causes, patterns, and drama. History taught analytically is jumbled, a big bag of events. Students experience it as an exercise in trivia.

Standards-based education is the product of the breaking down of education itself. It starts strong: to be a productive citizen, what ought students know? But after much churning and processing in a bureaucratic machine, it produces not an educational program but a spreadsheet that can be mapped to test questions.

It’s not just education: apps, memberships, services, domains, time slots, bedrooms, profiles. The parts dominate the whole in just about every aspect of our lives. The closest thing to a holistic experience is your Apple ID.

Like getting apple slices without having an apple, all this packaging needs to be counter-balanced — even when it’s excellent. As good as the educational content is out there, the way to make kids love nature is not to watch Planet Earth but to take a walk in the woods. Pick up a toad, and you know it better than from any book. You have an experience, a relationship with it.

That experience of integrating new knowledge into your mind leaves you wanting more—not because you understand it, but because you can’t pretend to.

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2. Resource Directory