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Re: what is understanding?



At 10:45 7/9/97 PST, Tom wrote:

On Wed, 09 Jul 1997 08:32:00 brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net> writes:

I would like to offer with my usual modesty, a definition of
'understanding' which is objectively measurable and does not
suffer from the semantics of
educational or psychological jargon.

Understanding can be measured by first providing leading details of
the physical behavior of some mechanism or process, and then
establishing if the subject can provide predictions of outcomes
and results for given
variations in the mechanism's states or configuration.
The requisite behavior on the part of the subject is the ability to
form a coherent model of the mechanism which she can manipulate in
accordance with the given configuration.
You will see that this is close to the idea of 'physical intuition',
a quantity which Maxwell, Feinman (sp?) and Einstein are said to have
possessed in great measure.

Regards
brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK

HI Brian, This is good, but with a little more thought, we can do better.
Regards / Tom


I personally doubt that Tom can come up with as good a definition of
'understanding' as mine, but being a very modest person, I'm willing
to read over what he may offer in a spirit of helpful critiquing.

Regards :-)
brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK