Form and Meaning

The more I learn, the more I understand about myself and everything else I've ever learned. I remember sitting in Sophomore year chemistry and learning that yes, there are positive electrons and that totally blow my mind. I went around for days saying that "Everything I know is a lie!" My senior year, I took AP Chemistry and suddenly, all the half learned principles of sophomore year came into focus and gained true meaning. Now that I'm a college student, all the chemistry falls into place in my bio100 class. Wow, Mitochondria works kind of like a positive electron cell! Cellular respiration is a combustion reaction!

Chemistry isn't the only background knowledge that's helped me. I learned to love Calculus my senior year: how it made sense of all the numbers and graphs in life. Economics also wiggled it's way into my heart with how it explains human behavior in terms of marginal cost and marginal benefit. At BYU, I've learned how to use some calculus to make more sense of economics, and I've used economics to make sense of my personal behaviors now that I don't have anyone looking over my shoulder.

All knowledge is interconnected: math, science, history, art, language. When we approach a subject one way, all we we see is one view, but by looking at it in terms of another subject, then our view is expanded; suddenly, it's not floating in a sea of nothingness but is anchored to all we already know. It has form and meaning, a reason for being. What's the point of knowing something, if it has no effect on you? I find joy, in the unity of knowledge and the continuity of truth.