Learning Has An End?

Learning Has An End?

I recently engaged in a short-lived debate about learning.  It seems I ran into someone who believes that learning can only be complete (and perhaps should only be attempted) when one can become an expert.  This meant, to him at least, that only a growing brain can adequately study something completely enough to be fully informed.  

I told him that one went out with the theory that we cease to produce new brain cells in adolescence and gradually lose brain cells over time.  This glib assumption made by some for years has been repeatedly disproven in recent brain studies.  Growth can continue into the mid to late 20's (but only if you assume that structural changes are the truest sign of brain growth).  

In any event, the last area to develop structure in most humans is the pre-frontal cortex, which holds our most abstract representations and thoughts that require the lower areas to develop first so that it can integrate their output.  "It's mostly about growing up, you know," I told him. "The later you grow up, the later your brain stops growing." 

But there is another way to look at it.  Learning is not just brain growth, it's brain change.   The brain may stop growing earlier than that, but it keeps changing throughout life. All learning is brain change, everything that you experience changes your brain.

His idea was that to learn something is to know it.  "To know it, is to know it in all its very depths," he said, "and you just don't have enough time left for that much study."  He didn't endear himself with this characterization of my stage in life either.  In a very few words I assured him he was full of it, and walked away without providing any argument to support my assertion.  

In the first place, I will admit I may be too old to remember what I learned yesterday, but that doesn't mean I didn't learn it.  So, do I give up trying to learn anything at all?  Does my every thought have to be that of an expert in the field, or is my point of view part of the learning that occurs?  My addition to the discourse on the subject at hand can simply be my perspective on it, which is, by definition, unique.  Further, it may not be available to the person with the complete and in depth knowledge, unless I share it.  I will only share it if I take enough of an interest in the subject to learn a few things about it.  

As a conscious being, I learn the texture, the sounds and the hues the world displays to me.  Sharing that consciousness is enough, I think.