12 September 2007

Questioning the Conventional

This quote points to something that, in reflective moments, I think that I have 'known' since I was quite young. I actually spent a lot of time wondering how to learn better and coming up with all sorts of tricks and cross-referencing techniques. I never felt these would be valued, but increasingly I am finding them being passed on at the edges of the education system. Anyway, here's the quote.
"Toward the end of his life, legendary mathematician Jacques Hadamard asked 100 of the top scientists of his time how they did whatever it was that they did (math, physics, etc.) Hadamard's survey found a massive disconnect between how we teach math and science and how mathematicians and scientists actually work. The majority of his contemporaries apparently claimed that using the logical, left-brain symbols associated with their work was NOT how they did their work. These were simply the tools they used to communicate it. What they used to do the works was much... fuzzier. Intuition. Visualization. Sensation (Einstein talked of a kinesthetic element). Anthropomorphizing. Metaphors."
Perhaps I should take seriously the way that I use imagery to think about space-time and God's relationship to it ...
IALA: What We Teach: Questioning the Conventional:

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