Dear Don, Terry, Ken, Gunnar, Johan, Keith and others in the Logical 
thread treat,

I wish to take on Ken's reference to Einstein and quote him: In 1933 he 
wrote:

"We revere the Ancient Greece as the cradle of western science. There, 
for the first time, the world witnessed the miracle of a logical system 
that moves forward step by step with such precision that each one of its 
prepositions is totally certain. I'm referring to the Euclidean 
Geometry. This admirable triumph of reason gave to the human intellect 
the necessary self confidence for its forthcoming achievements.

If you weren't thrilled by Euclid in your teens, then you were not born 
to be a scientist".

Note that I'm translating from a Portuguese translation, so the original 
may not be exactly like this.

I quoted this particular section in a Drawing conference, to be more 
precise in the London Drawing Research Conference in 2009. I'm sure that 
the rest of my arguments are boring enough to be displayed here but, as 
someone who was thrilled by Euclid in my teens and did not become a 
scientist, I may risk an interpretation of what old Albert was so 
thrilled about.

For Einstein (this was part of a speech at the University of Oxford), 
the Euclidean Geometry was the first argument to explain that 
theoretical physics was mostly mentally constructed rather than based in 
empirical observations. I will risk that what fascinated Einstein was 
the mental construction of Euclid for being intellectual and not for 
being intellectual in that particular way. The speech is mostly devoted 
to Einstein's ideas about contemporary Physics and, obviously, not about 
ancient geometry.

Another matter that is interesting in this historical/youth digression 
is the axis that goes through "western science"- "logical system"- 
"precision"- "totally certain"- "triumph of reason"- "self confidence". 
This was far from achieved in 1930's Physics and from the rest of 
Einstein's speech. I must say that in this List sometimes people are 
terribly concerned with using a similar skewer of juicy parcels of 
"knowledge" and fence arguments convinced that their spike is the most 
consistent.

Later in his life, Einstein gave us a further hint about the way he thought.

In 1945 responding to Jacques Hadamard in an enquiry about mathematical 
thought, he wrote: "The words or the language, as they are written or 
are pronounced, don't seem to perform any role in the machine of my 
thoughts. The physical entities that look like elements in thought are 
certain signs and images more or less clear that can be «voluntarily» 
combined or reproduced"

(...t)hese elements are in my case of the visual type".

Does anyone what to move from here?

Best regards,

Eduardo



On 21-06-2011 16:14, Terence Love wrote:
> Hi Don,
>
> Thank you for your message. I hope you caught the plane ok.
>
> The discussion  and my comments are about human every day abilities to
> create and analyse sentences in a 'technical' document arena (PhD theses and
> journal articles) in the context of 'things claimed and proven' through use
> of syllogisms and evidence.
>
> > From this perspective, improvements in simple straightforward writing skills
> using sound syllogistic analysis and the human skills based on Aristotelian
> logic  and now  bundled as first order predicate logic seem to  be helpful
> in the writing and publications in the design research field.
>
> In terms of the easy development of human skills that would improve the
> field, the methods and outlooks of Natural Language analysis seem pretty
> irrelevant.
>
> I'll respond more about natural language processing and cognitive science in
> another post.
>
> Best wishes,
> Terry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don
> Norman
> Sent: Tuesday, 21 June 2011 10:51 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Predicate first-order logic is NOT a model of human thought and
> reasoning.
>
> Terry
>
> you are showing your ignorance. I respect your judgement in the fields
> you know about: Cognitive science and natural language processing are not
> among these.
>
> You said:
>
> More advanced approaches to reasoning are available. It is not obvious that
> they are needed , however, for the above task of analysing sentences.
> Most advanced logics and approaches to reasoning depend, at least in their
> explanation, on correct application of first order logic in the use of
> language describing them
> ---
>
> Anyone who says that first order logic is a useful tool for analyzing the
> meaning of sentences has clearly not kept up with the literature in Natural
> Language Understanding.
>
> --
> I always find it amusing when outsiders to a field start debating the
> technical aspects of that field. The discussions remind me
> of freshman debates, late at night, after a lot of beer.
>
> I won't even comment on the debate as writing as thinking and/or research.
>   Or the argument about whether machines will replace humans in x, y, or
> z. Whoosh. Shades of science fiction. The technical people in AI, Cog Sci,
> and the apporpriate disciplines of philosophy have gone far beyond the
> arguments here.
>
> Yes, each of the debates contain some truths, but a lot of just plain
> ignorance about recent scientific research and theory.
>
> --
> enough.  You are already angry enough at me.
>
> Anyway, they are calling my flight: Seoul to Milan (via Munich). From
> airport lounges that serve rice gruel with abalone to one that
> serves wieners with sauerkraut.
>
> don
>