Experts Say: Newness Is Vital in EVERYthing Vital
The idea of newness isn’t important just in writing essays, or just in how to write, generally.
The idea of the vital importance of newness goes far beyond writing essays and how to write—newness has been creeping into the theories of many modern professional disciplines.
For instance, key theorists in Information Science have had some very NewView-ish ideas about communication:
But the whole point of a message, the whole point of writing the next sentence in a book, is that it should contain something new, something unexpected. Otherwise there would be no reason to write it in the first place. . .In an ordinary conversation, information is conveyed when the speaker says something that changes the listener’s knowledge. ——Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man (Simon & Schuster: New York, 1982) p. 28.
Such generalizing about “something new, something unexpected,” and “changes the listener’s knowledge” are all spot on with the OldView – NewView relationship I’ve been talking about in my books and blog posts.
What kind of “changes the listener’s knowledge,” in a very general sense? If the information theorists had the 5 NewView Options, the last part of that sentence could be written something like this—
- . . . something that changes the listener’s knowledge by adding facts or subtracting/reducing significance or substituting one purpose or strategy for another or by rearranging the familiar structure or by reversing the expectation of something valued by the listener.
One of the greatest educational theorists of modern times, Jean Piaget, pointed out the significant role of newness in education:
The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done—men who are creative, inventive, and discoverers.
And what better way to “create men who are capable of doing new things” than to train them in thinking about and using the processes of the 5 NewView Options on the 5 OldView Categories in their writing?
Another important modern influence on modern education theories and practices is David P. Ausubel, an award-winning educational psychologist who championed a theory of cognitive learning and teaching in the 1960s.
The essence of his theory is stated in his own words:
“If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.”
“What the learner already knows” relates to the OldView, of course.
And “teach him accordingly” fits in with using the 5 NewView Options to go from the old to the new. There is no other way since we cannot relate to a newness for which we have no antecedents, no previous like this or like that experiences, no existing categories and vocabulary of old, familiar thoughts and concepts to launch off from to the new.
So if the concept of “newness” is creeping in to the professionals of modern sciences and disciplines, what’s the problem?’
The problem is that they realize newness is important, somehow, but to them newness is still a big, black, mysterious box that houses all newness, without any distinctions.
Modern professionals simply are not aware of the clear relationship between the NewView Options and the OldView Categories, that there are five major ways each of those OldView Categories can be changed by NewView Options.
So all we have to do is convert them to the Gospel of NewView, right?
