Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!ncifcrf!haven!aplcen!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!n8emr!bluemoon!feedback From: feedback (Bryan Bankhead) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: What AI is exactly. Message-ID: Date: 25 Sep 90 11:35:29 GMT References: <1990Sep20.021103.6155@athena.mit.edu> Sender: bbs@bluemoon.UUCP Organization: Blue Moon BBS (614) 868-9982 & 9984 Lines: 22 > I was wondering when somebody was going to bring this up. I agree, nonverbal > thought is at least as important as verbal thought. In fact, Einstein wrote > that most of his thinking in formulating General Relativity was entirely > nonverbal -- he played with three and four dimensional contours in his head. > (Yes, folks, he had an incredible geometric intuition which most of us can't > match, but I think this was not a special case.) > > -- Interestingly as an artist who is also a minor computer jock I am interested in the concept of the relationship between verbal and non-verbal thinking. In reading the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci I am employing both. I am processing verbal messages and turning them into the data for use in creating paintings, but at the same time I cannot learn to paint just by reading books! Indeed, being an artist even, a part time sunday painter will cause the reader to extract far more information from LDV's notes than someonw who doesn't, even though much of the learning in painting is non verbal. The fact that these ideas cannot be reduced to simple dichotomies of verbal/nonverbal thinking is caused by the inherently massively parralell processing going on in the brain. All types of processing are going on at the same time and interacting with each other.