[bsedlm]

they removed the human element from the content. they've focused on the outcomes, the resulting inventions of the scientists and mathematicians. they only teach how to use the techniques, not how they were made.

paving the way (or building a wall) such that few can understand how people came up with that stuff. this is intended. this literally constructs knowledge as power.

The ways of thinking used to come up with the techniques are hidden, restricted. The academics who know the whole story (who know the ending -- which is what is taught, as well as how mathematicians of old came up with such ideas) hold this kind of power.

This gets even more interesting when the academics who know the histories, cannot really use the techniques. then the only people who knew both are historical figures (who get bathed in myth).

I cannot forgive them for this, given as they are still actively doing this. e.g. finding out how they make shredded wheat cereal is not possible [1]; and this must be technology from the early 20th or late 19th centuries... anything more recent is just hopeless.

[1] https://youtu.be/Qx8ovCJ9XPw?t=132

[bdowling]

How to make shredded wheat has been publicly known since at least 1895. [0]. How to make it efficiently at large scale is a trade secret that the company invested in and has a right to protect. None of this is related at all to the teaching of differential equations.

[0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US548086A/en

[bsedlm]

again, on my own very stretchy way of thinking (which involves big leaps in reasoning). you're saying that a company has a right to protect its secrets, but I'm hearing something comparable to (e.g.) "colonialist superpowers have the right to enslave people from Africa". I suppose I may be tuning into a moral ethical-framework from the future when I take 'offense' by the "rightful" actions of companies to keep knowledge bound and locked.

the relation is ideological, cultural (in the sense of being close to the intention of); not direct, causal, material (in the sense of relating to the actual implementation).