“I obtained assistance from no one. In fact, there were none of my acquaintances who knew anything whatever about these subjects.”
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In a groundbreaking 1864 paper, James Croll changed the way we think about ice ages.
He theorized that variations in the Earth’s orbit lead to a cooling feedback loop that produces glacial periods.
For most lifelong learners, however, the science behind his theory won’t be as interesting as the story behind it.
That’s because when Croll published this scholarly paper, he wasn’t a professor. He wasn’t a PhD in climatology. He wasn’t even a student, in the formal sense at least.
Instead, he was a 43-year-old janitor working at a museum—a curious lifelong autodidact who took advantage of the museum’s extensive library to extend his knowledge of astronomy and physics, stay abreast of the latest scientific theories, and develop his innovative theories.
Leading up to the publishing of this paper, basically all the knowledge he attained about science he had gotten on his own.
Croll left school at 13 to work on his family’s farm and, despite his intellectual curiosity, never attended university:
“The bent of my mind at the time was to attain a University education, which might enable me to follow out physical science. This, however, was a wish that could not be realized, as my father was by far too poor.”
Instead, he educated himself through wide reading, teaching himself physics, mechanics, astronomy, climatology, geology, and even philosophical subjects like metaphysics and epistemology—much of which he eventually used, like a true polymath, as material for his original ideas.
We know about these original ideas because, while working as a janitor, he had the courage to send his findings to eminent geologist Charles Lyell.
Impressed, Lyell introduced Croll to another geologist, Archibald Geikie, who hired him to work at the Geological Survey of Scotland, where Croll would do more research and eventually publish his findings in the 1875 book: “Climate and Time, in their Geological Relations”.
Stories of self-educated individuals making contributions to the world are common, but what’s uncommon is doing it in academia, especially in the field of science.
Safe to say, I was fascinated by James Croll.
With basically no formal science education whatsoever, he’s probably the closest historical figure we have to a real-world Good Will Hunting.
I was thrilled to see he had written an autobiography, and I dove in hoping to learn a thing or two about self-directed learning from him.
And oh boy did I learn something important.
In this issue of Thinkers, I’m sharing his key principle for self-directed learning and deep understanding, which he credits as the reason he was able to learn new complex subjects so quickly—all on his own.
After sharing a little of his story, I will explain this principle and give you 7 ways to apply it to your own self-directed learning projects.
Whether it is scientific disciplines, humanities subjects, or practical skills you’re trying to teach yourself, knowing this study principle will help you learn the fundamentals of new subjects in weeks or months, rather than years—while also becoming a more original thinker in your domain, like our friend James Croll.
First, though, a little background on his early days of self-education:
In his autobiography, James Croll admits he wasn’t much of a reader up until age 11.
He didn’t much care for school, and preferred playing games rather than sitting with a book. Croll refers to himself as a “dull scholar”, unable to keep up with the boys his age.
This malaise was likely due, at least in part, to bad teaching:
“The teacher there was rather harsh and tyrannical; and the consequence was that I abhorred school, and, as might be expected, made very little progress.”
His feelings about education and reading all changed, however, when he saw a book in a bookseller’s window: the first book of The Penny Magazine.
The Penny Magazine was a popular weekly British periodical, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) for the working classes who wanted an affordable education on science, history, art, and literature. At the end of each year, SDUK would bind the weekly issues into a book.
The young Croll purchased this book and “read with zest”. This marked the start of an entirely “new epoch” in his life. It was the beginning of a lifelong self-education in the sciences.
After the Pennywise book, Croll picked up Thomas Dick’s work of natural philosophy, “The Christian Philosopher”.
It won over Croll for its profundity and novelty of the ideas, leading him to the physical sciences, which would become his obsession in youth and his speciality in maturity.
“At first I became bewildered, but soon the beauty and simplicity of the conceptions filled me with delight and astonishment, and I began then in earnest to study the matter.”
He continued his studies, learning pneumatics, hydrostatics, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism.
By the age of sixteen, Croll would, in his words, “obtain a pretty tolerable knowledge of all the general principles of those branches of physical science.”
This begs a question.
How did he make such progress in such a short time period, without any help from teachers?
Below, I’ll cover Croll’s most important principle for effective self-directed study, which kept him from wasting hundreds of hours and helped him become a highly original, polymathic thinker.
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