The story of Jean-Francois Champollion versus Dr. Thomas Young contains an elemental lesson about the learning process, and illustrates two classic approaches to a problem. In the case of Young, he came to the hieroglyphic puzzle from the outside, fueled by the ambition to be the first to decipher the hieroglyphs and gain fame in the process. To expedite matters, he reduced the writing system of the ancient Egyptians into tidy mathematical formulas, assuming that they represented ideograms. In such a way, he could approach decipherment as if it were a computational feat. To do so, he had to simplify what ended up being revealed as an extremely complex and layered system of writing.
For Champollion, it was the opposite. He was fueled by a genuine hunger to understand the origins of mankind, and by a deep love of ancient Egyptian culture. He wanted to get at the truth, not gain fame. Because he saw the translation of the Rosetta stone as his Life’s Task, he was willing to devote twenty or more years to the job, or whatever it took to solve the riddle. He did not attack the problem from the outside and with formulas, but rather went through a rigorous apprenticeship in ancient languages and Coptic. It ended up that his knowledge of Coptic proved the decisive key to unraveling the secret. His knowledge of languages made him understand how complex they can be, reflecting the complexity of any great society. When he finally returned to the Rosetta stone with undistracted attention in 1821, his mind shifted to the Creative-Active. He reframed the problem in holistic terms. His decision to first look at the two scripts–demotic and hieroglyph–as purely visual was a stroke of creative genius. In the end, he thought in greater dimensions and uncovered enough aspects of the language to unlock it.
Many people in various fields tend to follow the Young method. If they are studying economics, or the human body and health, or the workings of the brain, they tend to work with abstractions and simplifications, reducing highly complex and interactive problems into modules, formulas, tidy statistics, and isolated organs that can be dissected. This approach can yield a partial picture of reality, much in the way that dissecting a corpse can tell you some things about the human body. But with these simplifications the living, breathing element is missing. You want to follow instead the Champollion model. You are not in a hurry. You prefer the holistic approach. You look at the object of study from as many angles as possible, giving your thoughts added dimensions. You assume that the parts of any whole interact with one another and cannot be completely separated. In your mind, you get as close to the complicated truth and reality of your object of study as possible. In the process, great mysteries will unravel themselves before your eyes.
* Source: Mastery by Robert Greene