Weblog van Spruit
Goal in life: Create order, think lateral.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Understanding
As I was reading the book on Einstein's ideas and opinions, I suddenly realized that I was getting (at least part of) what the specialized and general theories of relativity describe. That made me wonder. What does it take to understand a concept like relativity theory? In other words, when do we understand something?
First of all a mental construct representing the concept is needed. I imagine this is an activation pattern of neurons in the brain. So when I read relativity theory a mental construct is activated by an activation pattern of neurons.
This can start off with only a vague notion on what relativity theory is, an intuition or a coarse activation pattern. It may even have to be explained to me many times. But when I can grasp on to that, when it is concrete enough to hold in my mind, I can start working on it. I can do basically the following with my newly created mental construct:
-Detail parts of it, like drawing the leaves on a branch when drawing a tree.
-Elaborate on it, like drawing new branches.
-Limit it, like drawing the tree inside a building.
-Correct it, like erasing a branch in the drawing.
-Relate it to other mental constructs, like drawing the surroundings of the tree. This can result in new composite mental constructs.
As I am making use of these mental operations on the construct, I gain a better understanding of the concept. Until finally I have that 10 megapixel image of the tree in the field. Taken with that camera that no one else has!
A simple trick to understand complicated concepts is thus to start of with a very simple concept like thing and release the mental operations on it.Labels: cogsci, einstein, understanding
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