Value in Number: Lessons From Nursery School

The thought that is preoccupying me at the moment is whether or not there is value in number when it comes to human relations. That is, suppose you wanted to learn about the human race, would you be better off studying lots and lots of people? Or, would it suffice to only study one person really deeply?

Science tells us that the key to knowledge is repetition. On a macro level, a given study is only of ‘scientific significance’ if it can be replicated over and over again. On the micro level, a given finding is only of ‘scientific value’ if it is couched in a large enough sample to counteract the effect of outliers. Freed from practical concerns, a scientist would, ideally, study every single element in a set, then replicate the whole study over and over again ad infinitum.

Applying the scientific paradigm to life would lead to the following result. If you wanted to learn how to be a good friend, you would need to have lots and lots of friends. Want to be a good boyfriend? Have lots and lots of girlfriends. Want to be a good son? Have lots and lots of parents. If you have just a handful of friends, girlfriends, or parents, you could never be sure whether or not the ones you had were outliers. Even if you sure that what you were doing was ‘right’ with respect to this one, you couldn’t accurately predict whether or not it would work with the next one.

This whole line of discourse makes the assumption, though, that there is such a thing as variability in human behavior. Of this fact, I’m not entirely sold. Are we really all that different, you and I? Or, would it be fair to say that what holds true for me will largely hold true for you, too?

Or, put the question in another way, suppose your relationship with friends, girlfriends, and parents had less to do with them than it had to do with you? And would it then be fair to assume that the ‘you’ stays the same, always a constant. And if we concentrate our study on ourselves, would it then suffice only to gain self-understanding, singularly, variation being impossible with a set of one?

Or, should the distinction be drawn between knowledge and understanding rather than between you and them? Can understanding be more easily accomplished with only one?

If so, could it be said that everything we ever needed to understand about a relationship could have been gained from the first?

One of my dad’s favorite stories is of my first day of nursery school. Upon picking me after my first day, he asked, “So, how was it?” He reports that I stretched my arms real wide and exclaimed, “Dad, now I know EVERYTHING!” Maybe I was on to something.