pupil

Well said, seanahan.

Eh, only if you believe in evolution. ;-)

I feel very strongly about this. It is our lot in life to do a little better than those before us. To give our children a little more than our parent gave us. To add a little bit to science and culture, making the whole of humanity a little bit greater for our presence.

Apparently, eyeballs make lousy pupils. Ahuh! Huhhuh! < -- weak, upper-class-twit laugh.

Haha! Fewer presidents to learn! The thought never crossed my mind when I was a kid.

Right, I agree. I meant that our progress toward perfection may not appear to be as swift simply because there's more to learn. Thus, we remain relatively (and unfortunately) unenlightened, unbeautiful, unsublime, and still with war-hunger-poverty-hate.

Though in my view, it's still a good life. :-)

On the other hand, I don't think eyeballs really learn much at all. At least not that we're aware.

I agree, rt. I used to think, when I was a kid, how patently unfair it was to have to memorize all the presidents. Kids 100 years ago had half as many to memorize! Not fair.

That said... npydyuan's point (or da Vinci's) is a good one: the best pupils are going to eventually be better than the people who taught them, because there *is* more to learn, and to continually learn is what makes a good pupil.

Unless you're talking about pupil in the eyeball sense, in which case... all bets are off.

Well, wouldn't that assume, though, that the general body of human knowledge stays constant? In real life, it hardly does, and in fact (in terms of sheer volume) it's grown ever larger since da Vinci's time. So even if we are excellent pupils, isn't there just more and more to learn with every generation?

I read that Leonardo da Vinci said something along the lines of "it is a poor pupil who does not surpass his master." Are we largely then a race of poor pupils? Because if we weren't, wouldn't our progress toward perfection have skyrocketed by now? If everyone always got better as the generations wore on, shouldn't we be enlightened, beautiful, sublime, war-hunger-poverty-hate free by now?