[no subject]

[Bob Sciamanda <trebor@VELOCITY.NET>]

This is worthwhile reading, Sarma - Thanks.

I would make a distinction between "brainstorming" and "exposition".
"Exposition" to an audience follows only after "brainstorming" in private
(or at most within a circumspect circle).

Apropos is the following muttering of a giant:

"I have in my papers many things for which I could perhaps lose the
priority of publication, but you know, I prefer to let things ripen."
Carl Friedrich Gauss, in a letter to Pierre Laplace, 1812.


Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor

----- Original Message -----
From: DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA <narayana@HD1.DOT.NET.IN>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 9:11 PM


> WORTH THINKING ABOUT: LEARNING THINGS BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS
>      "School curricula reinforce the impression that logical subjects
like
> math and science require starting with basics and progressively adding
more
> sophisticated conclusions and applications. But the very nature of
logical
> laws make it equally feasible to work backward from conclusions, or
> observations, to hypotheses. Deduction and induction are entirely
> complementary.
>      "In reality, scientists and mathematicians do not do their crafts
in
> the linear, progressive way their subjects are usually taught.
Practitioners
> commonly start with a flash of insight (the stereotypical light bulb
> lighting), a hunch, a dream, a guess, an elaborate hypothesis or
postulate,
> and then work backward, forward, and around it to try to make it fit
with
> established knowledge. Physicists or engineers commonly try using
complex
> mathematical gadgets to solve the problems that interest them without
> knowing or caring how the math was logically derived. Experimenters
tinker
> in laboratories and make surprising discoveries that theoreticians then
> labor to try to explain logically. Alternatively, theorists like
Einstein
> come up with wild new theories like relativity that experiments may have
to
> struggle for decades to find a way to test and prove. Scientific
knowledge
> does not grow incrementally down a predictable track. Rather it grows
> volcanolike, sometimes oozing in patient rivulets, sometimes erupting in
> fiery ferment, and occasionally exploding, blowing away the rock of
> established truth.
>      "Pedantic, linear teaching rarely conveys the true drama and
mystery of
> the human quest for knowledge. School plods where human imagination
> naturally leaps."
>
> > From "School's Out," by Lewis J. Perelman
> ---------------------------------------------
> Source: NewsScan
>
> "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test
>  first, the lesson afterwards."     - Vernon Sanders Law