> Centaur Courses – About

About Us

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New Paradigms

"The Centaur Courses came out of a need to consolidate a body of ideas and techniques which have lately shown significant success in facilitating the logical connection of varied mathematical notions. The Courses is also, simultaneously, an endeavour to transcend traditional restrictions on education like high tuition fees, strict eligibility requirements, examination-centric teaching etc. The application of these ideas has suggested a new paradigm for the conduct of practical and intellectual activity involving physics, mathematics and computing,- one better suited to the social and cultural ends pursued since the last century."

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Your Questions Answered

  • Courses and tutorials built around your queries
  • Intuitive instruction mimicking cultural and popular intercourse
  • Concepts and Ideas mapped to questions
  • Rational structure of material illuminated by learners and instructors alike

Join the movement

  • Aid in the democratizing of education
  • Help normalize remote learning in advanced concepts
  • Undermine traditional restrictions like strict eligibility requirements
  • Help reinforce the original open source principles

Accumulate credentials

  • Contribute to the course literature
  • Propose fundamental queries to make it into the list of text co-authors
  • Add to the spread of Literate Programming and related constructs
  • Obtain decisive expertise in advanced mathematical concepts

Open Source Software

Besides our courses and tutorials, Centaur aims to aid in the revival of forgotten Open Source principles, such as those which laid an emphasis on the replicability of programming/software methods through a focus on teaching. See our efforts herein.

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Research

Our notes and programs form just a subset of open access material for study and seeking insight. Further material is available in the form of our regular video summaries on YouTube, as well as our forum for discussion of more abstract fundamental notions, Apriori True

Our Story

Tending to a malaise

The existing educational apparatus intended to enrich inquiry into these fields of thought evolved from a large collection of perfectly reasonable notions before quickly deteriorating at the hands of industry and bureaucracy, leaving a graveyard of good intentions and missed opportunities. It continues to be propped up by short-term commercial concerns which have become increasingly insulated from even the most practical problems of engineering and computing. However, this has been accompanied by another equally (if not more) significant progression: a steady increase in general interest in the associated technical discourse, especially interest in quantum physics, mathematical logic and epistemology. This is despite growing exclusion from effective education in the details involved, an exclusion the Centaur Courses was built to address.


Values

Conventional education has failed to incorporate the most successful theories of 'learning' and 'understanding' of the last 60 years. Modern cognitive science affirms Einstein's proclamation that "If you cannot explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Effective understanding does not involve swallowing complex theories whole, or by absorbing subject matter like a sponge. This is despite what you might have been told at school. Effective understanding is a result of sincere inquiry. This fact has been severely undermined by conventional practice, to the point that this mode of learning is now restricted to (mostly informal) cultural and philosophical discourse, despite its having been the basis of all serious scientific progress in the last 4000 years. The Centaur Courses intends to remedy this, as best it can.