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At 8:44 PM -0500 12/21/11, ludwik kowalski wrote:
to what is
On the other hand, as John D. emphasized several years ago--I am
nearly certain it was him--one proceeds from what is known
unknown. This implies linearity; topics are not chosen randomly. TheBut that doesn't mean the the order is either logical or
sequence of topics is essentially the same in all textbooks.
pedagogically correct. Mostly the order of most textbooks today is
historical, in the sense that "that's the way it's been done since
time immemorial, so we're not going to rock that boat." Several
altered topics orders have been tried, notably the Berkeley physics
series and Chabay and Sherwood's more recent effort, but none of them
has changed the preference for the traditional approach.
I know that this is a rather radical shift from the original thread,
but linearity doesn't imply logic, and, while a written text does
tend to imply linearity, ot doesn't necessarily imply logic of order
and so may well not make the subject any clearer to the confused
student. JD is correct in how he portrays the progress of
knowledge--from the known to the unknown--but there are many things
known that can serve as stating points and many routes from there to
the unknown, some more productive than others.