All the Way Down

The famous scientist has given a lecture on the nature of the universe. Afterwords, an elderly woman comes up to him and says, "Young man, you seem well intended, but you've got it all wrong. The earth is a flat plate."

Humoring her, the scientist asks, "But then, madam, upon what does this flat plate rest?"

She replies, "On the back of a turtle."

Smiling condescendingly, he responds, "If that's so, then on what does the turtle stand?"

She shakes her head as if explaining something that ought to be obvious, "Young man, it's turtles all the way down."

This story has been around in a variety of versions for a long time. Philosophers, physicists, and theologians use the story as a way to highlight what they call "the problem infinite regression," which is to say that any foundational explanation for anything requires further explanation. In other words, it is futile to try to seek the ultimate foundation for the universe. There will always remain the unknown. I know that this idea is unsettling for some, but I find it exciting and even comforting to know that we will never lack for something to wonder about.

It wasn't really until the 17th century that we began to believe that human consciousness was a product of the brain. Others had, of course, speculated about it, but René Descartes was the one who popularized the idea, one that underpinned much of the so-called European Enlightenment. It's an aspect of colonialism, of racial superiority, and modern schooling. It's one of the turtle's backs on which rests our standardized classrooms: indoors, seats in chairs, bodies still, eyes and ears focused on a teacher delivering direct instruction. After all, if our minds are contained exclusively within our brains, the rest must be superfluous, or at least secondary, to learning, so we must subdue the body in order to reach the mind.

By the middle of the 20th century, however, scientists had begun to doubt this notion. Pioneering neurosurgeon and mapper of the human brain Wilder Penfield wrote: "(A)fter years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier to be logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does not consist of two fundamental elements . . . (T)here is no good evidence, in spite of new methods, such as the employment of stimulating electrodes, the study of conscious patients and the analysis of epileptic attacks, that the brain along can carry out the work that the mind does."

In a rational world, this kind of insight would have completely transformed the way we do education. If the brain alone cannot carry out the work of the mind, then that leaves us to consider that it is a function of the rest of our body as well. If we were rational, our schools would have become places in which movement was the norm, in which all the senses are engaged, in which we embrace the notion that learning is a full-body, immersive experience. You know, like life itself.

Many of today's leading researchers are now coming to consider that the operations of our minds extend beyond our bodies into the world around us, including other people, and even inanimate objects. Indeed, some leading thinkers like neuroscientist Guilio Tononi are exploring the idea that everything in the universe, every atom, every subatomic particle, contains some degree of consciousness and that so-called higher consciences, like ours, are built upon the backs of ever more simple consciousnesses . . . all the way down.

It's tempting to say that our schools, at one time, did reflect the latest science about how humans learn and now need to catch up, but the truth is that our schools have never been based on scientific evidence. They are based instead on the practices of industry and the military, human projects that rely upon discipline, order, and predictability, not science. There was a time, of course, when our leading thinkers were convinced that our minds, our brains, functioned like machinery, like clockworks or assembly lines, but modern schooling emerged far after these notions were abandoned by scientists. No, modern schooling is based not on the science of how minds work and learn, but rather on how people are controlled and goods are most efficiently processed. This isn't to say that individual teachers don't strive to make learning happen, but it's within a system that isn't designed around how the human mind actually works and learns.

The wonder and frustration of the scientific method is that there is always another turtle, all the way down. So what we "know" today about human learning will be just another turtle in an infinite regression of turtles. This is why I choose play. Play is how Mother Nature has designed us to educate ourselves. It accounts for every unknown because it is driven by the unknown. It requires no theories or systems other than curiosity and the freedom to pursue it.

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