thread: 2005-12-03 : Closing GNS and RPG Theory is Good
On 2005-12-06, Ed Freeman wrote:
I've spent a good chunk of my life teaching university level mathematics. Every year, students have been making the same mistakes and have been doing so for literaly hundreds of years. "I've been telling you people for ten years now that (a+b)^2 is NOT a^2 + b^2!"
At the Forge, there seems to have been a roughly yearly cycle of the same arguements being repeated, but by different posters! It seems like no matter what the field, people have to go through understanding it in stages, and hitting fairly predictable speed bumps along the way.
Newtonian Mechanics has been suplanted by Quantum Mechanics. But they still teach Newtonian mechanics, and people still use Newton for lots of things. I suspect GNS and the Big Model are goign to be the same way.
There's one last idea I'd like to bring in from mathematics. There are situations where people learn the basics, and situations where people discuss the cutting edge, and _these are different places_. I think we could use a forum (whatever the software!) where, like an acedemic conference, anybody can read but only invited people can post.
==Ed
This makes RE go "YES"
YES
This makes JBR go "Well..."
To some extent, even to a large extent, yes. But game design is not math or biology; it's far more on the side of the humanities, where we learn by proposing, arguing, and defending, not solely by reading what other people have posited and proven. Over in the sciences, you don't get to invent your own mathematics until you're tenured. In the humanities, you get to make up entire critial theories as an undergrad, cause it's a useful learning tool.
This makes MH go "Quite :)"
I've done some teaching myself, and oh do I recognize this :) it wasn't uni, though; the speed bumps are for example the popular "5^2 must be the same as 5*2".
