Organic knowledge

Organic knowledge is grown from a life-long experience, interest, tests of a creator. On the other side, there is knowledge that is rigid, memorized, closed, isolated. When you delve deeper to understand something organic knowledge easily connects with other ideas whereas non-organic is closed off.

If you cannot explain it simply you don’t understand it well enough

Richard Feynman

recorded

Fun to Imagine

and it is my favorite example of Organic knowledge. This are some physics definitions that I knew in this narrow, disconnected, partial, technical that he explains in the simplest terms. Feynman is my top example when you take a organic approach to learning. When he was a physics student instead of focusing on memorizing theory from textbooks he would challenge fellow students anybody to explain a complex problem using only simplest terms. He believed that if he can understanding complex problem this way he would be able to arrive at higher quality conclusions.

I took this term from

Paul Graham

and his essay Organic Startup Ideas "There are two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to be necessary to some class of users other than you". He also says that most successful startups they help grow in Y-Combinator were based on organic ideas.

‣

Inbox

Connected ideas: Theorethical vs. Practical knowledge. Learning using theory

Organic vs artificial knowledge?