Line Upon Line, Precept Upon Precept

So this doesn't really apply to ancient civilizations, but it has to do with the importance of this unit.

The other day I was doing some reading for my TR Program Dynamics class, and ran across an article that stressed the importance of documenting research in the healthcare and therapeutic fields. In these fields, especially recreational therapy, there are many theories that drift here and there and everywhere, but there is little concrete evidence to support them. Lots of the articles out there explain these theories, but there are very few articles that actually have documented research. The interesting thing that this article points out, is that many researchers actually do conduct experiments to prove these theories, but they forget the most important part: writing them down! Most people fail to do this because they do not have enough time, resources, education, staff, etc, and do not realize that these excuses are trivial when considering the knowledge that is lost when articles are not written explaining the research and the results. This is detrimental because it causes research to stall and become stagnant. A lot of this is because everyone wastes their time redoing each others' studies, not realizing that that study has already been done before; and if there were new studies performed, no one else knows about it. So ironically, the concern that there is not enough time to document the findings, really ends up wasting everyone's time.

The article illustrates this cycle of how Practice-Based Research leads to Evidence-Based Research, and Evidence-Based Research leads to Practice-Based Research. Both need each other to progress in order for discovery and growth to occur. "Research informs practice and practice informs research. Evidence is needed in order to build the best possible programs...Results produce the outcome data that is accumulated and is used to demonstrate program effectiveness. The relationship between research and practice, when working well, is symbiotic and improvement oriented." (Source).

 
This cycle goes on and on, and not just in therapeutic recreation, but in all things, in all times, and all places. Because so many of our thoughts are sparked by the thoughts of others, which leads to new discoveries, and new discoveries lead to more thoughts, which leads to more discoveries. If you think about it, almost everything we know, we know because someone else taught it to us. When we are taught new things, we process the information, and are led to expound upon it. Knowledge is building constantly, line upon line; precept upon precept. Think back to those ginormous computers that used to take up an entire room! Now we have smart phones that fit in the palm of our hands. So much of this development and growth is due to the fact that we have books to inform us, notes to remind us, and pen and paper available to write down an idea. I believe that writing is the medium that has brought us the technologies and the discoveries that we have today.

Of course, this can go the opposite way as well. In the case of the Ancient Egyptians, Egypt was conquered in 30 BC by the Romans, and so the use of hieroglyphics eventually died out, and with it, all of the knowledge they had written down died as well. Thankfully, someone recorded the Rosetta Stone, which "bore an ancient inscription containing the same text written three different ways--in hieroglyphs, in the demotic script, and in ancient Greek. The stone was taken to Europe, where scholars translated the ancient Greek and used the information to decipher the other two texts." (Source). So although Ancient Egyptian was lost, and for 1,800 years people were unable to build upon that knowledge, with the help of the Rosetta stone, they entered right back into this pattern again: the pattern of building upon what you do know to figure out what you don't know.