BAKHLE shows how our mind absorbs the knowledge we gain on daily basis.
The entire human knowledge – and this includes all the spheres of human activity – belongs to just three categories. All fields of knowledge – biology, music, economics, cooking, sports, crime, electronics, interpersonal relationships or religion – have these three categories. It is quite interesting to learn how the human mind handles knowledge in all these walks of life.
What are these basic three categories? The first category is identifying a pattern and giving it a name. This starts right from the basic alphabets. Three lines drawn in a specific pattern form the letter ‘A’. But different patterns of three lines can mean the letters ‘H’ or ‘N’ or ‘Z’. We teach our kids to recognise these patterns. We also teach them the name or title of these patterns in the form of sounds: the pattern ‘A’ means the sound A and so on. All the words are nothing but titles given to specific patterns. For example, earthquake is the name given to pattern of bits of information. The small word helps us convey a large amount of information easily.
One further advance of this type of communication is the modern use of short forms such as ROFL – rolling on the floor laughing! A small ‘word’ that conveys a lot of information. Every field has its own short forms. Gradually, as the expertise increases, we start recognising larger and larger patterns quickly. We can read words fast and, later, we can read sentences and paragraphs fast.
Even animals have words in their languages for conveying specific information. For example, scientists found out that monkeys have different words (sounds) for eagles and snakes. Scientists recorded the sounds that monkeys made when they saw eagles and snakes, both are threats for the monkeys. But the sounds were not just of fear, but specific words indicating specific danger. So, when scientists replayed the sounds indicating eagle, all the monkeys started looking up at the sky to locate the eagle. Whereas, when the sounds representing snake were played, all the monkeys started looking down – towards the ground!
The next category of knowledge is ‘understanding the similarities and differences between two or more entities’. For example, a cook knows the differences between wet coconut and dry coconut – although both are forms of ground coconut. An actor knows the difference between facial expressions for showing ‘sadness + anger’ and ‘sadness + defeat’. An accountant can tell you the precise similarities and differences between a fixed deposits and recurring deposits. An infant knows the similarity and difference between the mom and the babysitter!
