I got interested in how people learn when I first read “Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century” about 5 years ago. This lead me to other books. One of the books I read was “Mindstorms” by Seymour Papert. That is where I encountered the term Mathetics, for the first time. For some strange reason, a book I was reading about Math triggered me to look up Mathetics.
“On a pragmatic level, ‘Look for connections!’ is sound mathetic advice, and on a theoretical level the metaphor leads to a range of interesting questions about the connectivity of knowledge. It even suggests that the deliberate part of learning consists of making connections between mental entities that already exist; new mental entities seem to come into existence in more subtle ways that escape conscious control. However that may be, thinking about the inter-connectivity of knowledge suggests a theory of why some knowledge is so easily acquired without deliberate teaching. In the sense in which it is said that no two Americans are separated by more than five handshakes, this cultural knowledge is so interconnected that learning will spread by free migration to all its regions. This suggests a strategy to facilitate learning by improving the connectivity in the learning environment, by actions on cultures rather than on individuals”
I will explore this a bit further but the concept of inter-connectivity of knowledge is definitely a fascinating one. Here is the link to the page with the quote and comments, in case you want to explore further.