According to science ‘fluid’ is a substance that continually deforms (flows) under applied shear stress or external force. In simple words, fluid has no shape and environment of its own; it transforms itself very quickly and is very adaptable to different environments.
In today’s world, people have isolated themselves into their own beliefs and disciplines. Then there are the people, often from a science background, who are very calculative and have a very mathematical mind, while on the other hand are the non-science or say, the artistic people.
The difference between them is that neither the science camp nor the non-science camp is ready to accept each other—as they both have their own different worlds. But what happens if an artistic or a literary person is asked to explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics? And in the same vein, what if a scientist is asked if he/she had ever read Shakespeare? Most of them will express their ignorance in these different disciplines.
So this is where we need to be more fluid. Getting outside the confines of our disciplines and grabbing new and different opportunities, so that we humans can be more than what we are taught.
Today, we all see the world through the prism of our respective disciplines. Ironically, this disciplinary isolation where we are not interested to see beyond our discipline is primarily a result of the way we currently acquire education.
In the 21st century fast-moving world, children are specializing too early in schools as a result of which the gap between those studying and practicing the sciences and those the arts is getting worse. However, there are a few of us who try not to isolate our disciplines from each other too early.
Our current education system requires us to become masters of our disciplines—specialists, as we commonly understand. And because of this we not only need to choose our disciplines as early as in school but if we are to become the masters of our respective subjects, we have to give up on activities which we would otherwise want to engage in, any hobbies or passion that gets in the way.
But then this question pops up: had it been like this forever? In order to understand the disasters of isolating our disciplines too early, we need to look at the theory named ‘Continental Drift Theory’.
According to this theory, we can understand the evolution of human beings, how they formally educated themselves 2000–7000 years ago. This theory says that the earth’s landmass has gone through and is continuing to go through a process of change. For example, about 225 million years ago, the earth was a single tract of land surrounded by water.
Assume that by virtue of sheer fortune, you have inherited infinite power so much so that you can move continents. Now pull all the continents towards you. The squashed landmass that results from this will show how the earth looked approximately 225 million years ago. This unified landmass is termed a super-continent and is named Pangaea.
Exactly like the unified landmass of the earth, the ancient scholars considered human knowledge to be an interconnected whole, freely exploring all possible disciplines.
We can take the example of Aristotle (384-322 BC), a student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. Although a great philosopher, he researched and wrote on a wide variety of topics such as zoology, botany, physics, philosophy, geology, poetry, theater, music, physical fitness, linguistics and medicine, among others.
Earlier, scientists and researchers were free to choose their disciplines. They did not cordon themselves to specific disciplines, hobbies and activities. They wanted to absorb as much as they could. How many of you are aware of the fact that the creator of one of the world’s most renowned painting, the Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci, was not just a painter but also an Architect/Engineer? You see here that Da Vinci had never been told that a brain could be either logical or creative. He just absorbed everything and never differentiated between disciplines.
Coming back to the ‘Continental Drift Theory’, the landmass of the earth is in a constant state of shift, hence as soon as Pangaea was formed, the landmass started to shift. Similarly, the disciplines, too, started drifting. With each passing day, our disciplines have evolved to such an extent that today they have become almost independent islands separated by vast oceans. The students and practitioners of a particular subject remain firmly attached to their own landmass and refuse to look at other disciplines; in other words, they are anti-fluid.
Today, we focused on our own world in our own islands as much as possible, and rarely bother about what is happening to the other landmasses.
Island-Centric living defines the way we see the world. Having little understanding of what is happening on the other islands, we only see the people, the culture, the issues, the progress and the opportunities of the other disciplines through our own prism of understanding.
So to be fluid, one should welcome each and every discipline with his/her arms wide open, unlike the institutions today, which are training students to be specialists in their respective fields and giving up on all extracurricular activities. From my point of view, informal education is way better than formal education.