All great advances in technology and science rest on the foundation of technical education. Even the self taught inventor must educate himself with books of science. Technical education not only forms the minds of inventors, scientists and engineers, but indeed defines the very nature of a civilization. The fundamental reason for this is that mathematics is as much and underlying principal of art as it is of science. Euclid’s Elements, the mathematical foundation of the classical world, corresponds perfectly with the elevation of space-filling sculpture as the highest form of art. The changing quantities of Newton’s Principia are consonant with music being the principal art of our own Western civilization. As we enter an era in which the old society is collapsing and a new one is forming, new technical education must be developed for the new world.
As an image of this new world begins to come into greater clarity, a time is coming of both great peril and great opportunity. It has become all to clear that the scientific establishment we have come to depend upon has in the past five decades shriveled away to a hollow shell of what it was once intended to be. The encircling grasp of digital involution threatens the emergence of a new Dark Age, in which context collapse and the erosion of learning has destroyed the common knowledge held by mankind.
Yet immense advances in electronic computation and communication, and the much reduced cost of scientific equipment allow for a growing number of experiments to be conducted outside of the ivory tower. Thus in this age of increasing chaos, scientific discoveries increasingly shall result from research within the private sector. Therefore, whatever advances emerge in the next Heroic Age of Invention will almost certainly be the work of Gentleman Scientists. However, acquiring the skills necessary to become one independently often appears to be a Herculean task. Would-be scientists and inventors still turn to the crumbling universities to learn the fundamentals of science and mathematics, but encounter a profoundly uninspiring ethos; a culture suited only to shaping the next cohort of corporate drones.
For this reason it is now clear that methods of instruction in the fundamentals of mathematics and engineering above and beyond the standard university sequence must be developed. To this end, the Tom Swift Academy was created. It is now entering a more concrete phase of development, and learning modules in mathematics, science and engineering will be published through the coming months at weekly intervals.
A proper education consists of memorization, practice and periods of deeper study and reflection. Therefore, these modules will consist of articles, interactive training units, and recommended reading. While there is much online material covering the fundamentals of web development and other topics in computer science, there is surprisingly little relating to calculus and university physics. Therefore, the first lessons in Tom Swift will cover roughly the mathematical and scientific material encountered in the first two years of engineering school.
The initial subjects shall be mathematics, physics and electrical engineering in a scheme organized as follows. My series covering the Great Pursuits will be the laboratory component of this program. Bullet points in the academic catalog will go live as content is developed, so be sure to check this page regularly.
Mathematics
Discrete Math
Calculating Partial Derivatives
The Multiple Integral
Calculating Multiple Integrals
Physics (simulations will be created both with and without calculus)
Mechanics
Heat
Sound
Light
Electricity
Magnetism
Radiation
Electrical Engineering
Ohm’s Law
Kirchhoffs’s Laws
RLC Circuits
AC Circuits
Transistors
Diodes
Logic Gates
Microcontrollers
Scientific Computing
Laboratory
Countering digital involution is still the fundamental purpose of Tom Swift. As such, there will be recommended reading with each unit. These assignments shall be drawn from a corpus of knowledge known as the Tom Swift Library. This consists of various works of public domain material, drawn from Project Gutenberg or otherwise available in PDF form. As no true scholarship can be conducted without physical volumes, on a somewhat further horizon I fully expect to make these forgotten technical titles available through print-on-demand.
Complementary to the reading list is an archive of informational films. Most of these films date from the era of the Space Age, and hence present the full glory of that era. In time, these will be integrated into the learning units in places where they are most useful. I suspect that they shall provide a helpful antidote to the degenerate modernity that so many Tom Swift students will have been previously accustomed to.
Even a modicum of this lost learning will make you well-versed in the skills necessary to navigate the bizarre twisting turns of our collapsing monoculture, and build the foundations of the next Heroic Age of Invention. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King!
Sign me up!