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From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: RE: Intuition in Physics
Message-ID: <289@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Oct-83 11:00:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.289
Posted: Mon Oct 10 11:00:59 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Oct-83 01:03:12 EDT
References: <2360@ncsu.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Piscataway
Lines: 30


>    I presume that at birth, ones mind is not predisposed to one or another
>    of several possible theories of heavy molecule collision (for example.)
>    Further, I think it unlikely that personal or emotional interaction in
>    one "pre-analytic" stage (see anything about developmental psych.) is
>    is likely to bear upon ones opinions about those molecules. In fact I
>    find it hard to believe that anything BUT technical learning is likely
>    to bear on ones intuition about the molecules. One might want to argue
>    that ones personality might force you to lean towards "aggressive" or
>    overly complex theories, but I doubt that such effects will lead to
>    the creation of a theory.  Only a rather mild predisposition at best.

>    In psychology it is entirely different.  A person who is agresive has
>    lots of reasons to assume everyone else is as well. Or paranoid, or
>    that rote learning is esp good or bad, or that large dogs are dangerous
>    or a number of other things that bear directly on ones theories of the
>    mind.  And these biases are aquired from the process of living and are
>    quite un-avoidable.

The author believes that, though behavior patterns and experiences in a
person's life may affect their viewpoint in psychological studies, this
does not apply in "technical sciences" (not the author's phrasing, and not
mine either---I just can't think of another term) like physics.  It would
seem that flashes of "insight" obtained by anyone in a field involving
discovery have to be based on both the technical knowledge that the person
already has AND the entire life experience up to that point.  To oversimplify,
if one has never seen a specific living entity (a flower, a specific animal)
or witnessed a physical event, or participated in a particular human
interaction, one cannot base a proposed scientific model on these things, and
these flashes are often based on such analogies to reality.