{"id":2659,"date":"2018-12-01T14:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/?p=2659"},"modified":"2018-12-01T14:05:48","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T14:05:48","slug":"qotd-doing-more-requires-thinking-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/01\/qotd-doing-more-requires-thinking-less\/","title":{"rendered":"QOTD: Doing more requires thinking less"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>by the aid of symbolism, we can make transitions in reasoning almost mechanically by the eye which would otherwise call into play the higher faculties of the brain.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations that we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle \u2014\u00a0they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.<\/p>\n<p>One very important property for symbolism to possess is that it should be concise, so as to be visible at one glance of the eye and be rapidly written.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211; Whitehead, A.N. (1911). <em>An introduction to mathematics<\/em>, Chapter 5, &#8220;The Symbolism of Mathematics&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/introductiontoma00whitiala\/page\/60\">page 61 in this version<\/a>)<br \/>\nHT to Santiago Nu\u00f1ez-Corrales (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.informatics.illinois.edu\/person\/santiago-nunez-corrales\/\">Illinois page for Santiago Nu\u00f1ez-Corrales<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/snunez\/\">LinkedIn for Santiago N\u00fa\u00f1ez-Corrales<\/a>) who used part of this quote in a Conceptual Foundations Group talk, Nov 29.<\/p>\n<p>From my point of view, this is why memorizing multiplication tables is not now irrelevant; why new words for concepts are important; and underlies a lot of scientific advancement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by the aid of symbolism, we can make transitions in reasoning almost mechanically by the eye which would otherwise call into play the higher faculties of the brain. &#8230;Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations that we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,96],"tags":[650,652,649,651],"class_list":["post-2659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-ecosystem","category-random-thoughts","tag-cavalry","tag-modes-of-thought","tag-qotd","tag-symbolism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2661,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions\/2661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}