The simple and basic can be understood without the complex, however, the complex cannot be understood without the simple and basic.

Professor Ivan Pavlov, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1904.

We are all imperfect professors but my posgraduate students are happy ... very happy. However, and in spite of all the imperfections, all of us may be granted a certain degree of slack and forgiveness if we have done our very best and have advanced the quality of postgraduate education a few steps forward. As in all aspects of life, teaching and learning is an ongoing process, and better professors and students will appear and develop with the passing of years. 

With the passage of time, human academic research and knowledge have become virtually unfathomable in breath as well as depth. In fact, such a massive volume of facts has become extremely difficult to absorb, process, and control by a single human mind. The truth is that every former and original area of science and the arts has been split-up into many highly specific sub-areas, each one subtler and much more specialized than the pre-existing one. 

Science is known for its capacity to produce a deconstructive analytical and piece by piece description of different phenomena, while philosophy is known for its integrated synthetic interpretation of the entire whole. We could clearly state that observing processes and constructing means belong to the field of science, while generating pertinent questions, to criticize rationally, and to coordinate ends, belong to the field of philosophy. 

However, science without philosophy, in other words facts without perspectives, logical evaluations, and the capacity for conceptual synthesis cannot circumvent and/or prevent an onslaught of distress and confusion. Why is this so? 

The answer is that science provides us with rational knowledge and also rational proof of that knowledge, but only philosophy can provide us with the deep and wide-scoping rational wisdom to understand life and man in the context of life … in the absence of proof. 

The current and incommensurable volume of human knowledge we have today, as well as the exponentially increasing total world population, has become immense and almost too vast and complex for the human mind to grasp and fully comprehend. Because of such, there is way too much information available, and most humans currently live in a constant state of confusion, uncertainty, insecurity, anxiety, and fear. 

Evolution, both biological and cultural, has slowly but surely taken us by the hand to this point and moment in time. Never has the planet, humankind, and overall education been in greater need of solid, value driven, and well-educated postgraduate university professors and eager to teach their students.  

I am speaking about professors with the capacity to develop and empower bright, academic, and research-oriented minds. Minds capable of grasping and integrating highly complex system-driven parameters while, at the same time, shedding a beacon of light on questions such as: where do we come from? how did we get here? where are we at this very moment in time? where are we headed? and what can be done to continue evolving and surviving as a species? All those questions while maintaining the best and most humane thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns possible.

Judging from the above statements, and with the constant flow of time, all that has managed to survive have been world-wide and scattered groups of scientific or humanitarian ultra-mega-specialists. These are highly educated and extremely focused individuals who, with each passing day, exercise a clinically obsessive tendency to understand more and more about less and less. 

Simultaneously, and on the other hand, we have witnessed the survival and expansion of the imminently intellectual universal philosophical academic. Individuals that, with each passing day, tend to understand less and less about more and more. 

In both poles of the spectrum, be it the ultra-mega-scientific specialist or the ultra-speculative universal generalist philosopher, the main point in truly understanding life and man is being totally bypassed and missed. The students who are educated by these extremely polarized professors wind up in a horrible state of confusion as well as far away from consensual reality.

All and well, but how and why did this gradual drift in the wrong direction start and come about? What elements and factors drove the process to its current state? And what will postgraduate university professors have to think, feel, and do in order to revert its current and disastrous direction?

It is clear that the ultra-mega-specialist has simply put on a form of intellectual blinders in order to develop a myopic and obsessive hyper-focus. By doing this he was able to completely block from his mind´s laser-fine eye everything but an infinitesimally small area of investigation and/or interest. To that very small micro-area he focused his mind and interest, and, as I have stated before, often reaching the point of clinical obsession. 

In this manner, all true perspective was eventually distorted and then prolifically lost in the massive information fog. Sheer and cold facts neatly replaced thorough understanding and deep comprehension; and humongous amounts of accumulated knowledge was broken-down and split into uncountable amounts of tiny and individually isolated fragments. All of which no longer generated true human vision, understanding, and wisdom … most especially, wisdom. 

The term “wisdom” depicts the ability or result of the human capacity to think and act utilizing knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight. The five key characteristics of wisdom are: 1.- curiosity; 2.- perspective; 3.- judgement; 4.- creativity; and 5.- love of learning and continued education.

Additionally, the term "sophism" comes from the Greek "Sophos" or "Sophia," meaning "wise" or "wisdom." It originally referred to any expertise in a specific domain of knowledge or craft. After a period where it mainly referred to poets, the word came to describe general wisdom and, especially, wisdom about human affairs.

Also, and with the constant passage of time, every conceivable branch of science, and every conceivable branch of art and philosophy, developed a highly complex form of technical terminology or jargon which very few could and can understand and articulate. To others, in the likes of medical patients or legal clients, for example, such language sounded like an encrypted and highly complex form of underground communication system they could not even begin to comprehend and implement.

As humans learned more and more about the nature of the world and the surrounding universe, they found themselves progressively less and less capable of expressing to others what it was that they had studied, researched, and proven to be true. In this catch-22-like manner, teaching and educating postgraduate students set to attain high degrees of intellectual independence became a conundrum very difficult to resolve.

The existing gap that lies between life and knowledge grows wider and wider by the day, and many lay people are totally unable to understand those who can think at higher and more sophisticated levels. On the other hand, and on the same line of thought, many highly motivated postgraduate students that really want to know what life and nature is all about, never seem to be able to understand those lofty professors who really know their subject matter, but have failed to develop proper and efficient communication and interaction skills. 

A postgraduate student is an individual who has successfully completed an undergraduate degree and is pursuing further advanced studies, such as a master's (M.A. or M.S.) or doctoral degree (Ph.D.). Quite often, and on a frequent basis, their professors literally bombard their students with research paper after research paper and publication reference list after publication reference list, without teaching and transferring the basic core concepts of the subject matter they are trying to communicate.

In this current and powerful turmoil of unprecedented interest and thirst for learning, popular ignorance has continuously flourished and grown to incredible world-wide and also plague-like proportions. In fact, and to my total dismay, many undergraduate and postgraduate professors prohibit their students from asking any and all questions while in class.  

The final result of this retrograde educational process is very somber indeed. Now, postgraduate students world-wide find themselves compelled to choose between a scientist conveying microscopic and unintelligible technological advances, and a philosopher conveying macroscopic and unimaginable mental constructs in hopes of understanding and explaining life as a unified whole. As always, true nature and life lie somewhere in the gray area that exists between those two extreme polarities.

In this shameful situation the basic function and ultimate goal of the postgraduate university professor should be very clear indeed. His function is none other than to mediate between the highly educated erudite specialist and his postgraduate students. Students in the form of highly motivated human beings who simply want to be further educated in hopes of understanding life and the world in simple yet profound terms. 

In order to achieve this goal, we need to break down all limiting barriers that exist between a student´s knowledge and his need to become a highly educated person, as well as to develop and apply the most efficient communication and motivation methods available. Because of such, simple and easily accessible human knowledge is an absolute need at all levels of modern society. 

Let us not, then, be ashamed of teaching our young and eager-to-learn postgraduate minds with all our love, might, knowledge, and humanity. Perhaps each one of us, as solid and proven postgraduate university professors, can be of aid to one another, an especially for you, our dear and beloved students. 

Whatever the case, and in the worst-case scenario, it is always better to switch on a flashlight than to curse the darkness. Postgraduate studies will always require excellent professors who can make a swift U-turn and return to the very basics, all in hopes of assisting the student in developing solid knowledge and a functional critical thinking base with which to tackle further studies and life itself.

Our current professional scenarios demand a constant form of hyper specialization in an exponential and ever-increasing mode. Such a world can be defined as an interconnected and interactive complex system that requires breadth and depth of knowledge, well diversified hands-on experience and expertise, complex interdisciplinary systems thinking ability, and an advanced and highly developed form of delayed concentration and focus. Now that is indeed a very tall order to fill by postgraduate students and professors. However, it can be done.

Because of such, and in the current state of our hi-tech and ultra-mega-specialized professional world, the generalists can easily trump the ultra-specialists. And they can do so because they search for and embrace multiple and wide-scoping diverse experiences and perspectives, as they consistently grow and progress in their respective lives. 

In the final analysis, and as an experienced postgraduate professor, my most humble and sincere recommendation to postgraduate students would be for them to develop their educational spectrum in two or more clear-cut dimensions: 1.- the first one, on the horizontal axis and in the form of a wide-scoping and generalized liberal arts knowledge; and 2.- the second one, on the vertical axis and in the form of a deep and highly specialized scientific and/or technical knowledge. 

However, a university and its professors can only offer postgraduate educational possibilities to the student, and no more. In this manner, and keeping in mind that a happy student is a good student, the educational process becomes a take it or leave it binary condition. In essence, it becomes a common-sense based condition in which the final decision always rests within the mind of the student.