Charlie’s lattice
Charlie Munger often talked about developing worldly wisdom, a deep understanding of the world through understanding of the major disciplines. One would need understanding of the big or core ideas from each discipline, to a point of fluency, in both the hard sciences such as physics, engineering and biology, and the soft sciences such as psychology and economics. To store this knowledge, he proposed one would have to create a latticework of mental models, or a mental filing system.
Charlie achieved this through:
Possessing an incredible mind
Diligent reading over decades and decades
Filing everything away in memory in a ‘lattice’ of models to draw from
Actually consistently applying these models to new situations that come up in life and reading
This process is something (except #1) we can work on over time, slowly building our knowledge base.
On how to lay down the lattice - a practical method
Over the last decade I have been along this slow process trying to learn the big ideas, feeling like I have been making progress, but in disparate domains without any organisation. I have stumbled along in blind faith that things would make sense eventually.
Recently however, I have noticed a change where I viscerally feel that I can see the hazy outline of a framework in the knowledge that I have accumulated. I feel like the disciplines and ideas are somewhat organised in my head. When we pursue exponential growth through steady learning, its only after a long period of limited growth that we actually see decent progress has been made.
Having this framework allows us to retain, recall and regularly use the ideas, which further reinforces their memory.
Looking back I have found several key ideas which facilitated in creating this framework.
One needs to learn several key disciplines first, and this provides the scaffolding on which other disciplines can sit within. These are:
Human history including agricultural, energy and technological developments
Physics
History of world empires
We need to learn and a modest depth to begin, not being too superficial, nor spending too long on each subject. The depth will come later on reading further, once the scaffolding is set.
Learn the chronology of key ideas in each discipline. Know the approximate date when discoveries were made, which helps in our mental filing.
Overlap of key ideas between disciplines reinforces the retention and chronological order. For example, during the 1400-1500s there many physics discoveries made, such as those by Galileo and Newton, with a huge change in perception from an Earth centric to sun centric view of the universe. This was facilitated by the invention of the printing press in the 1440s with its associated spread of knowledge, and the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire which pushed scholars back to Europe and rekindled a focus on the sciences.
Across these fields, the same topics come up multiple times, which allows our brains to manipulate the topic from multiple perspectives while organising them chronologically. This really makes you feel like you understand the landscape on which each idea has developed and exists in. The pieces of the jigsaw slowly click together, but only towards the end of the journey.
For each discipline I found a particular book which provided an overview of the big ideas at a depth that was deep enough, enjoyable and not too in depth. There may be better ways of doing this, or better books, but I found they were all very engaging and had enough common ground. I recommend starting with Guns, Germs and Steel as it gives a good overview across many areas, but the rest any order would be okay.
The topics and books
Human history - Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (1997)
Covers the development of humanity across many domains including food, livestock, language, weapons and technological development. It shows how and where humanity developed over the last 10,000 years.
This book blew my mind, going from no real understanding, to a good grasp of how civilization across the world progressed over the years, and also explains why progress occurred at different rates in different countries.
A few key times in our development as a species:
Humans evolved as a separate species about 7 million years ago (mya), solely confined to Africa
Only 1mya spread outside of Africa, firstly to Europe/Asia
40 thousand years ago (kya) to Australia and 12kya to the Americas, after which they developed separately, only to be ‘rediscovered’ by European settlers ~200 years ago with ‘primitive’ beings!!
We remained hunters and gatherers throughout time until only about 10kya when first farming developed and 9kya when first domesticated animals. This move to farming occurred first in the Fertile Crescent, in the present day middle east.
Technological developments
This briefly covered in Guns, Germs and Steel, but many books discuss some inventions and technological developments.
Some key developments in human progress:
3mya stone stools; 2-4kya - steel tools
1440s printing press - the widespread publication of books enabled reading and knowledge to become common across the world
Late 1700s steam turbines, mechanized looms, factories;
1840s steam trains and railways, steamships, telegraphs;
1860s first internal combustion engine
1876 first telephone by Alexander Graham Bell
1882 first electric power stations
1900s first commercial production of cars by Ford;
1903 first flight by Wright Brothers
1945 first precursor computer ENIAC based on vacuum tubes;
1947 development of transistors, late 1950s integrated circuits which lead to proliferation of computers
1980s - primordial internet
Another resource on technological developments is the “Understanding Globalization” chapter in How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil (2022)
Energy - Energy: A Beginner’s Guide by Vaclav Smil (2017)
Energy utilisation is what has skyrocketed human progress over the last 200 years by enabling rapid technological development, after millions of years of slow progress as a species.
A 200-page dense and statistic heavy book, explained from first principles. It will give you a good grounding on what actually makes up energy use and production through time.
Some key energy developments of time:
Human muscle from the beginning
Animal muscle - first domesticated animals 9kya
Inanimate prime movers - such as sails (5kya), waterwheels(2kya), windmills(1kya)
Biomass - wood and charcoal burning
Coal - burning 1600s, first in England .
Oil and gasoline - 1880s
Physics - The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein by George Gamow (1961)
George Gamow worked for Niels Bohr and met Einstein!
Is a really enjoyable read with detail about the physicists’ lives and is written mostly non-technically for the layperson. Does require some deep thinking at times around the experiments, but this can be gleamed over.
Gamow explains major physics developments from the Ancient Greeks to the 1960s. In each era, he explains the overarching common beliefs, and then explains the setup of the seminal experiments that progressed peoples’ thinking.
For example, in the 100’s AD the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy noted the stars to move around the Earth, giving front to a Earth centric view of the entire universe. This was held as a worldwide belief and persisted all the was until the 1500s when German astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler discovered that planets rotate around the Earth, establishing a sun-centric view of the universe.
See the appendix below for a fascinating but simple excerpt of maths puzzle showing how relativistic thinking can enable solutions, where any other way would be near impossible.
History of World Empires - The World Empires and Great Movements by Goolbai Gunasekara (2008)
This is not widely available- I picked it up from a bookshop in Sri Lanka - but it is only 135 pages long and provides an excellent sketch of most of the empires from the Ancient Greeks on. Any other book on empires would likely suffice.
Learning about the different empires really ties together how the other science technology developments fit in within the context of society, religion and the incentives of different countries.
For example, the 1400s Renaissance came to fruition as after the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman empire in 1453AD, the scholars relocated to Italy and Europe. This coupled with the printing press being invented in the mid 1400s sparked the Renaissance and rebirth of learning, after the Dark Ages where there was not much learning when the Western Roman Empire had collapsed in 400s AD along with interest in the Greek/Roman learnings.
The Empires covered include:
Ancient Greeks
Romans
Muslim world
Renaissance
Catholic Reformation
Mongols
Americas
Industrial Revolution
French Revolution
Unification of Italy and Germany
American Revolution
This list of disciplines is by no means exhaustive, but I find they provide much interlinking which helps provide the skeleton of a framework to build upon.
Peter Kaufman
The only other reference to a method of building this lattice of mental models was by Peter Kaufman. He is the longstanding CEO of Glenair, was on the board of the Daily Journal with Charlie for many years, and edited Poor Charlie’s Almanack.
In his amazing speech on multidisciplinary learning, he highlighted that it is near impossible to learn all the disciplines to the depth Charlie did.
He recommended a shortcut by reading all the monthly interviews done with scientists in Discover Magazine over the prior 12 years. The scientists are explaining their greatest discovery to the layperson, so they are well written and credible. He also recommends reading them all, without picking and choosing. On doing this he feels he learnt all the big models from the big disciplines!
This seems like such a practical way to go about it. I have them ready to go and will get onto it as soon as I can.
Latticework by Robert Hagstrom
This book provides a good overview of the big ideas in the different disciplines, but is too brief to cover any with enough depth. It does provide a good reference to what the main ideas are in each discipline, that one can further research.
Appendix - A Fascinating Excerpt
From The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein by George Gamow described above.
Try solving this maths problem:
And the mind blowing solution: