A Novel on Creativity, Education and Self-Actualization, Scientific Inquiry and Eastern Wisdom
This novel, Leonardo and Da Vinci: The Tao of Meta-Learning is a work of fiction and deals with Creativity, Education and Self-Actualization, Scientific Inquiry and Eastern Wisdom. It is based on facts extrapolated from science, scientific inquiry, education, the martial arts and the Indian yogic-philosophical tradition. It blends the three themes mentioned above with a view to stimulate perceptive thinking and dialogue. It draws attention to the tremendous possibilities inherent in every human being and how meta-learning is possibly the most powerful means to actualise one’s deepest potential. And that perhaps the most effective manner of realising this is by tapping the highest positive elements of both Eastern and Western worlds and thereby rephrase Rudyard Kipling’s words as, “East is East, West is West, here the twain shall meet.”
Angiras Rik is a bright young boy who is supposed to be learning challenged, a slow learner. Perhaps it is ADD, ADHD, OCD or bipolar disorder, it could even be dyslexia, his school counselors and teachers have declared. Starting from his 5th grade, he fails in his final exams at the end of each year. The schools offer him only two options, either to repeat the same grade or to be given a transfer certificate so that he can join another school for the next grade.
Angiras Rik, however, is a born inventor. He is forever tinkering with devices, pulling them apart and putting them together in weird ways to serve completely different functions no one has even dreamed about by employing Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning of which he has extraordinary mastery. The contraptions he rigs up and the futuristic devices he invents are mind-boggling. His favourite invention, the AI powered owl-bat robot drone, Nachiket that can grow invisible via a negative refractive meta-material is his assistant and constant companion. Angiras is also a magician and martial artist steeped in Eastern wisdom and the esoteric Indian yogic discipline by virtue of his family tradition.
Angiras carries his extraordinary learning lightly and prefers to keep his outstanding accomplishments in invention, magic and the martial arts highly personal except when a higher purpose compels him to do so otherwise. This is seen strikingly during his 7th grade, at the Blue Spheroid International School where he covertly employs his and his Grandpa’s neuroplasticity based inventions to eliminate the problems of visually challenged, hearing challenged and physically challenged students and faculty, rescues a German shepherd dog that falls from the 20th floor and empowers a learning challenged boy to become a top-ranking student.
In his ongoing quest for truth and knowledge, Angiras has a great yearning to become a scientist and considers himself learning challenged for a very different reason than that of his teachers and counselors. To overcome this learning challenge, he bypasses the ordinary world of the scholastic mind and embarks on his hero’s journey into learning the symbolic language of Nature by acquiring the disciplined mind of the serious scientific inquirer.
When the student is ready the master appears. When there is a burning aspiration to learn, the guidance is already on the way. And Angiras’s deep primal need to learn the symbolic language of Nature prompts his Grandpa to come to his aid and initiate him into meta-learning or learning to learn Natural Philosophy, especially Theoretical Physics, Pure Mathematics and the Mathematics of Computer Science. But he is least prepared for the great surprise that awaits him.
Angiras’s Grandpa and Grandma have been deeply concerned about one thing. They know that Angiras is embarking on a mode of learning that is exceedingly extensive and intensive. It is highly unlikely that he can have the benefit either of a friend with whom he can share his interests or a teacher who can help him learn. The only way they could think of meeting Angiras’s real learning challenge is by inventing two futuristic robot mentors whom they name, Edisla Leonardo and Edisla Da Vinci, or simply, Leonardo and Da Vinci. In his hero’s journey, Angiras, therefore, receives miraculous scientific aid in the form of these robot mentors, Leonardo and Da Vinci who henceforth become his constant companions in all his adventures in meta-learning or learning to learn.
