Why am I writing this?

-The Ultimate Question of Life, The University, and Everything

 

 

Why do students deliver their awesome work? Why do scientists explore and publish? Why do people do Ironman or climb mountains? Why do people create poems, music, craft and art? And why are people creating free and open source software? (By the way, reread the subtitle, the answer is NOT 42!)

 

Activities like those above is not about survival. In many cases it costs money and it takes lots of time and effort that could have been used finding food or earning some money to buy food. You probably need to have enough at least for your most basic needs before you reach for the other goals. Still have people long before us made works of arts and have been enchanted by the stars and planets in the sky.

As a biologist I begin to seek an evolutionary explanation

Why great antlers make female deer “horny”?

Some animals have developed extravagant ornaments like peacock feathers and deer antlers. Ornaments that are costly to grow and heavy and risky to carry around. Already Darwin was puzzled about that and suggested that it had to do with sexual selection.

 

Peacock (1)

 

But why do female deer prefer guys with great unpractical antlers? Zahavi (2) came up with a possible solution. Only the males with the best genes (and some luck I suppose) could grow and survive carrying around those great ornaments. With help of the ornaments the female deer can choose a good father for their offspring.

 

Red deer (3)

I have seen some author, but I couldn’t find the reference, suggesting that the same applies to humans. That great works of sports, culture and science are a way to signal to the opposite sex that you have the capacity to carry some extra weight and still survive and hence have good genes.

Am I just trying to show my antlers or peacock train by writing this text? Well, I may not need to be that desperate. I’ve got a wife, three kids and four grandchildren. Maybe young students find more need to show off their antlers?

But if it’s not about getting laid

The psychologist Maslow (4) puts things in a little bit different order. Still he leaves us with needs that haven’t got to do with basic survival. 

 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as interpreted by Wikipedia(5)

 

I have got lunch, I feel rather safe here, I’ve got friends and a family. Maybe I’m just trying to get respect, self-esteem, status and recognition?

How about students then? Could respect, self-esteem, status and recognition be things that get them ticking too?

I know that Maslow has been criticized for lack of evidence. Maybe someone active in the field can point me to some more modern research.

Linus Law

Linus Torvalds defines in his prologue to (6 pp xiiv-xvii) a similar model where he divides human needs in three parts; survival, social life and entertainment. He shows clearly though that he has pretty high standards for what he defines as entertainment and exemplifies with painting, chess, Einstein’s physics and things like that and of course exploring the inner work of a computer.  Writing this is certainly entertainment according to Torvalds.

Himanen (6 pp 3-6) continues with quoting different well-known hackers describe their work using terms like “amazingly enticing”, “most intriguing”, “excitement”, “joyful”, “passion”

He thinks “passion” is a better word then Torvalds “entertainment” and I think I agree.

 

The hacker learning model

Himanen (6 pp 73-76) describes what he calls the hacker learning model. “A hacker ‘s learning process starts with setting upp an interesting problem, working toward a solution by using various sources, then submitting the solution to extensive testing". Learning about the subject becomes the hacker’s passion” that sounds to my ear as problem-based learning. He describes it as “a continuously evolving learning environment created by the learners themselves” and calls it a Net Academy.

 

The monastery

Himanen also criticizes universities for being hierarchical and means that universities four hundred years after the industrial revolution more are as monasteries “It seems quite strange that we expect scholastic teaching models to be able to produce modern individuals capable of independent thought and the creation of new knowledge”(6 pp 76-77)

 

Discussion

There seem to be other forces driving human curiosity and creativity then grading. Still, I have taken courses where tests and grading were the only thing that made me study, the least needed to get a PASS. Maybe that was a bad course or maybe it just wasn’t the right course for me.What do you think?

Resources

 

1.    Peafowl. I: Wikipedia [Internet]. 2020 [citerad 09 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peafowl&oldid=985420240

2.    Zahavi A. Mate selection—A selection for a handicap. J Theor Biol. 01 september 1975;53(1):205–14.

3.    Ebbesen B. Red_deer_stag_2009_denmark.jpg (JPEG Image, 2832 × 4256 pixels) - Scaled (16%) [Internet]. [citerad 09 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Red_deer_stag_2009_denmark.jpg

4.    Classics in the History of Psychology -- A. H. Maslow (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation [Internet]. [citerad 09 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm

5.    U3155259. English: Figure 3: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [Internet]. 2019 [citerad 09 november 2020]. Tillgänglig vid: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow_hierarchy.jpg

6.    Himanen P, Torvalds L, Castells M. The Hacker ethic and the spirit of the information age. New York (N.Y.): Random House; 2001.