Re: What is understanding?

[Samuel Held <Held@RHIP.PHYS.UTK.EDU>]

Jack,
        Take a math class where you have to do proofs and you will find
out very quickly that not all theorems have that property.  In fact,
part of some quesitons is working that out.  One that comes to mind of
being false is multiplication of matrices.  AB not= BA (except for II =
II).
I hope you weren't being sarcastic.

Sam Held

-----Original Message-----
From: JACK L. URETSKY (C)1998; HEP DIVISION, ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB
ARGONNE, IL 60439 [mailto:JLU@HEP.ANL.GOV]
Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 1:35 PM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: Re: What is understanding?


        Is there some sort of presumption that the converse of every
theorem
is true? Or, is "I breathe when I sleep", the same as "I sleep when I
breathe", to quote from Alice.
**********************************************************
> According to what I rememeber:
> The quote of Feynman (advice to himself on his last blackboard) was
> "What I cannot create, I do not understand." (Phys Today 10 years ago)
Does it follow that one understands whatever he/she can create?

Cary
***********************************
                                Regards,
                                        Jack

        "I scored the next great triumph for science myself,
to wit, how the milk gets into the cow.  Both of us
had marveled over that mystery a long time.  We had
followed the cows around for years - that is, in the
daytime - but had never caught them drinking fluid of
that color."
                Mark Twain, Extract from Eve's
                Autobiography