Transfer Of Learning
observers for millennia. Leaving aside the hidden growth in one’s mother’s womb (left to embryologists to study) we have all heard of infancy, childhood, adolescence and manhood or adulthood. We all know we allow years for each of them and see each of us get into one as we leave the other. Entering may be understood but leaving is not so easily understood. Perhaps the examination of our growth of learning will help in that understanding. Humans know themselves in-the-world and are affected by what goes on in it. But they also know themselves as having an inner life and as being unequally interested in all that goes on in the world. Humans can use their interests as guiding lights to enter into dialogues with the universes in which they and others find themselves. Every time they use those lightings they set into relief those aspects of life which matter to them, leaving in the dark or in a penumbra, others which then either do not affect them or affect them very little. To the adoption of some lightings we give the name of “absolutes” and there are equivalences between “living in an absolute,” “only being interested in this or that,” “being involved passionately in such or such activities” and some other similar expressions. According to their contribution to improved clarity in a study, one or the other is used. But we can let ourselves become accustomed to their co-presence in our minds for use in the proper settings. Absolutes have the advantage, upon interests, in that they can easily embrace large durations (like 5 years) but interests have an advantage in that they can be called in to understand pinpointedly, what actually happens in a very short event. Absolutes are qualifiers of horizontal evolutions and can be used to describe what happens psychologically to all of us in terms of simultaneously being totally involved in some aspect of life and totally ignoring all others. Within each absolute, transfers of learning seem to belong to each other since the aspect of the law of integration at work shows the self using all that has been done so far to let in a new element — one capable of being grasped because of the past — and replace some of the previous functions by new ones in the manner for 16