Samuel Arbesman says there’s a regularity to how knowledge changes. “And hopefully that’s the kind of thing that can provide a certain amount of comfort to people,” he says. “I think it also is really exciting that knowledge is changing.”
Arbesman, a senior scholar at the Kansas City, Mo.-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, discusses the evolving nature of knowledge in the latest installment of Kauffman’s Sketchbook series. In the video, released earlier this week, Arbesman shares ideas explored in his new book, “The Half-Life of Facts“.
Although Abresman’s video is not entrepreneur-specific like many of its Sketchbook brethren, it still contains plenty of nuggets that should resonate with the entrepreneurial set.
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For instance, Arbesman cites an idea posited by a Harvard University economist about the pace of how new ideas are accepted. “It’s crazy, crazy, crazy … obvious,” Arbesman said. “And I think a lot of turning over of facts is the same way.”
The fine line between fringe and mainstream ideas is one that certainly resonates with entrepreneurs.
But Arbesman says it’s important for all people to understand that their education “isn’t a done deal.”
“There’s an order and a regularity to how knowledge changes,” he concludes, “and understanding that can actually give you a certain amount of hope and a way of ordering the world around you.”
Credits: Video from the Kauffman Foundation on YouTube.
