I come from a very intellectual very
academic family both my grandfather’s
were among the greatest scholars of the
20th century and my father is a very
fine scholar of Buddhism and classical
Indian languages it’s fair to say that
growing up I’m not sure I quite
appreciated this Millia I was in I was a
pretty regular kid very into football
then rock music but there’s no doubt
that around our house the conversation
was of a very rich intellectual sort
history politics music science culture
were all an integral part of our
everyday lives I remember on one
occasion we were sitting around our
family table and we were eating this
delicious hazelnut cape my grandmother
used to make maybe with just eggs by the
way no flour very interesting and
there’s also a whipped cream that went
with the cake and we started discussing
whether this cream went from being a
liquid to some kind of solid because of
a chemical reaction that happened when
you whipped it or some kind of
mechanical change in the cream at the
table was also a friend of mine a
french-canadian philosophy teacher and
at one point he just banged down his
spoon and said may God I just want it
enjoys a cake and Celine
we looked a little bit sheepishly at one
another and then at our plates and I
think that was a moment of realization
that our family was a little bit unusual
I don’t think he was right about us Oh
intellectualizing all food because
chocolate was also a major part of our
family life but he was certainly right
that this millio this culture of rich
intellectual conversation was very much
part of our normal family life one of my
grandfather’s Gombrich he’s credited
with revitalizing art history in the
english-speaking world he brought into
art history and knowledge and lover
psychology biology and also non science
disciplines like history philosophy
classics and so on he was really a very
great interdisciplinary in’ he wouldn’t
have liked that word because it’s a very
ugly word but it’s true he didn’t see
any boundaries in knowledge on the
contrary he thought that to address the
most interesting problems you needed to
access and use and leverage knowledge
from any discipline at all one of my
grandfather’s great friends was Karl
Popper the philosopher another great
20th century intellectual and Karl
Popper said we are not students of some
subject matter we are students of
problems and problems caught right
across the borders of any subject matter
or discipline pappa believe that it was
deeply human to be a problem-solver he
thought that was one of humanity’s
defining traits and he said there’s
nothing greater in life than to find
your problem to fall in love with it and
to spend your life trying to solve it at
Cambridge but many many other
universities around the world have this
incredible opportunity were immensely
privileged that we’re in a position to
be able to find our problem and then
spend some or even all our lives
addressing finding a solution to that
problem I want to tell you now about
three students on the course I ran at
UCL the Arts and Sciences B
see Rosita is studying inorganic
chemistry material science proper
chemistry with the chemists she’s also
very artistic she didn’t art foundation
course and she’s studying fine art with
us as well and she’s done some design
engineering she uses software to design
and prototype products Rosita’s capstone
dissertation is looking at how she might
design a face mask for very polluted
cities like London or Delhi or Shanghai
and isn’t a lovely thought that some
young aesthetically minded material
scientists with strong design
engineering knowledge would design a
beautiful face mask for us to enjoy in
any smoggy environment chemistry art and
engineering very few courses at
university level would allow someone
like Rosita to bring together those
particular disciplines in that very
interesting way to solve that particular
problem
Lena graduated last year and her
capstone dissertation was on anaerobic
digestion basically putting food waste
in a kind of low-tech box which turns
out heat which can then be used to heat
the building which the waste came from
kind of part of the circular economy
Laney used some knowledge of engineering
with economics and sociology and she
previously studied law to produce an
outstanding capstone dissertation which
won the world undergraduate awards for
environmental science last year virginia
studied international development
systems engineering languages and she
also taught herself because you should
all do that while at university some
coding on the side and she got quite
proficient in coding virginia now heads
up a tech part a startup part when
international consultancy firm looking
at conflict and fragile states bringing
to bear all her interdisciplinary
knowledge in that particular real world
environment international development
systems engineering languages coding
these students couldn’t really have
solved these problems without some kind
of interdisciplinary
package some synthesis of knowledge so
one would hope really that universities
would
naturally provide such courses such
environments for people to do such
wonderful curricula of their own
interest people who can fall in love
with that problem that Papa says we
should and then bring to bear the
extraordinary wealth of knowledge that
they can on those problems one would
hope that would happen anyway but
there’s more of course we are living in
the most extraordinary times for our
interaction with knowledge and the
generation of knowledge
I have friends my age who crossed
continents to go to university because
the library in the university was so
good now I’m not saying there still
aren’t hundreds thousands maybe even
millions of very beautiful old books and
manuscripts which are in libraries and
which we do need to go to interact with
but let’s be honest most students don’t
really think about the quality of the
book library now when they go to
university for very good reason on their
phone in the palm of their hand they are
accessing the millions and millions of
bits of information and knowledge that
come down to them and where are the
categories of knowledge on this phone
where are the boundaries between history
and sociology or for that matter between
art and engineering or engineering and
material science or law sociology
economics and engineering where are
those boundaries we know that most
innovation comes from nearby examples
this what’s called recombinant
innovation most innovation happens when
people see one idea juxtapose it with
another and synthesize something new out
of it and yet we don’t really encourage
intellectual environments for younger
people where they can move between these
different disciplines and see the
possibilities to synthesize these things
together
Steven Berlin Johnson the writer on
innovation says chance favors that
connected mind and yet you can’t really
connect the dots unless you’ve had
experience of different disciplines and
some idea of how to bring those
disciplines together so we need to
provide educational infrastructures
educational cultures which allow our
young people this possibility to fall in
love with their problem and bring to
bear on that
the whole wealth of knowledge now at
their disposal through which they wander
I call this period a period in which the
combinatorial space of ideas has
exploded you’re in it right now you walk
through it wherever you walk you’re in
that combinatorial space of ideas and
what an explosion it is you need an
environment an educational culture and
educational infrastructures that allow
you to leverage that explosion and
synthesize new knowledge from this
amazing sweet shop of knowledge we’re
living in so what we must do I think is
stand on the shoulders of our
disciplinary grandfathers and
grandmothers with their art history and
their wonderful hazelnut cake but we
must also create new educational
infrastructures new educational cultures
which allow for this exciting synthetic
interdisciplinary learning so important
for now and for the years to come
[Applause]
academic family both my grandfather’s
were among the greatest scholars of the
20th century and my father is a very
fine scholar of Buddhism and classical
Indian languages it’s fair to say that
growing up I’m not sure I quite
appreciated this Millia I was in I was a
pretty regular kid very into football
then rock music but there’s no doubt
that around our house the conversation
was of a very rich intellectual sort
history politics music science culture
were all an integral part of our
everyday lives I remember on one
occasion we were sitting around our
family table and we were eating this
delicious hazelnut cape my grandmother
used to make maybe with just eggs by the
way no flour very interesting and
there’s also a whipped cream that went
with the cake and we started discussing
whether this cream went from being a
liquid to some kind of solid because of
a chemical reaction that happened when
you whipped it or some kind of
mechanical change in the cream at the
table was also a friend of mine a
french-canadian philosophy teacher and
at one point he just banged down his
spoon and said may God I just want it
enjoys a cake and Celine
we looked a little bit sheepishly at one
another and then at our plates and I
think that was a moment of realization
that our family was a little bit unusual
I don’t think he was right about us Oh
intellectualizing all food because
chocolate was also a major part of our
family life but he was certainly right
that this millio this culture of rich
intellectual conversation was very much
part of our normal family life one of my
grandfather’s Gombrich he’s credited
with revitalizing art history in the
english-speaking world he brought into
art history and knowledge and lover
psychology biology and also non science
disciplines like history philosophy
classics and so on he was really a very
great interdisciplinary in’ he wouldn’t
have liked that word because it’s a very
ugly word but it’s true he didn’t see
any boundaries in knowledge on the
contrary he thought that to address the
most interesting problems you needed to
access and use and leverage knowledge
from any discipline at all one of my
grandfather’s great friends was Karl
Popper the philosopher another great
20th century intellectual and Karl
Popper said we are not students of some
subject matter we are students of
problems and problems caught right
across the borders of any subject matter
or discipline pappa believe that it was
deeply human to be a problem-solver he
thought that was one of humanity’s
defining traits and he said there’s
nothing greater in life than to find
your problem to fall in love with it and
to spend your life trying to solve it at
Cambridge but many many other
universities around the world have this
incredible opportunity were immensely
privileged that we’re in a position to
be able to find our problem and then
spend some or even all our lives
addressing finding a solution to that
problem I want to tell you now about
three students on the course I ran at
UCL the Arts and Sciences B
see Rosita is studying inorganic
chemistry material science proper
chemistry with the chemists she’s also
very artistic she didn’t art foundation
course and she’s studying fine art with
us as well and she’s done some design
engineering she uses software to design
and prototype products Rosita’s capstone
dissertation is looking at how she might
design a face mask for very polluted
cities like London or Delhi or Shanghai
and isn’t a lovely thought that some
young aesthetically minded material
scientists with strong design
engineering knowledge would design a
beautiful face mask for us to enjoy in
any smoggy environment chemistry art and
engineering very few courses at
university level would allow someone
like Rosita to bring together those
particular disciplines in that very
interesting way to solve that particular
problem
Lena graduated last year and her
capstone dissertation was on anaerobic
digestion basically putting food waste
in a kind of low-tech box which turns
out heat which can then be used to heat
the building which the waste came from
kind of part of the circular economy
Laney used some knowledge of engineering
with economics and sociology and she
previously studied law to produce an
outstanding capstone dissertation which
won the world undergraduate awards for
environmental science last year virginia
studied international development
systems engineering languages and she
also taught herself because you should
all do that while at university some
coding on the side and she got quite
proficient in coding virginia now heads
up a tech part a startup part when
international consultancy firm looking
at conflict and fragile states bringing
to bear all her interdisciplinary
knowledge in that particular real world
environment international development
systems engineering languages coding
these students couldn’t really have
solved these problems without some kind
of interdisciplinary
package some synthesis of knowledge so
one would hope really that universities
would
naturally provide such courses such
environments for people to do such
wonderful curricula of their own
interest people who can fall in love
with that problem that Papa says we
should and then bring to bear the
extraordinary wealth of knowledge that
they can on those problems one would
hope that would happen anyway but
there’s more of course we are living in
the most extraordinary times for our
interaction with knowledge and the
generation of knowledge
I have friends my age who crossed
continents to go to university because
the library in the university was so
good now I’m not saying there still
aren’t hundreds thousands maybe even
millions of very beautiful old books and
manuscripts which are in libraries and
which we do need to go to interact with
but let’s be honest most students don’t
really think about the quality of the
book library now when they go to
university for very good reason on their
phone in the palm of their hand they are
accessing the millions and millions of
bits of information and knowledge that
come down to them and where are the
categories of knowledge on this phone
where are the boundaries between history
and sociology or for that matter between
art and engineering or engineering and
material science or law sociology
economics and engineering where are
those boundaries we know that most
innovation comes from nearby examples
this what’s called recombinant
innovation most innovation happens when
people see one idea juxtapose it with
another and synthesize something new out
of it and yet we don’t really encourage
intellectual environments for younger
people where they can move between these
different disciplines and see the
possibilities to synthesize these things
together
Steven Berlin Johnson the writer on
innovation says chance favors that
connected mind and yet you can’t really
connect the dots unless you’ve had
experience of different disciplines and
some idea of how to bring those
disciplines together so we need to
provide educational infrastructures
educational cultures which allow our
young people this possibility to fall in
love with their problem and bring to
bear on that
the whole wealth of knowledge now at
their disposal through which they wander
I call this period a period in which the
combinatorial space of ideas has
exploded you’re in it right now you walk
through it wherever you walk you’re in
that combinatorial space of ideas and
what an explosion it is you need an
environment an educational culture and
educational infrastructures that allow
you to leverage that explosion and
synthesize new knowledge from this
amazing sweet shop of knowledge we’re
living in so what we must do I think is
stand on the shoulders of our
disciplinary grandfathers and
grandmothers with their art history and
their wonderful hazelnut cake but we
must also create new educational
infrastructures new educational cultures
which allow for this exciting synthetic
interdisciplinary learning so important
for now and for the years to come
[Applause]
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