I was reading a passage from Einstein:
“…Words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined…but taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.”
I also read that Ronald Aymler Fisher was a big visual thinker too. From Wikipedia: "Lifelong poor eyesight caused his rejection by the British Army for World War I,[17] but also developed his ability to visualize problems in geometrical terms, not in writing mathematical solutions, or proofs."
I was wondering /sci/, what is your thinking mechanism like? Are you more visual or do you have an internal monologue? Also, what field of science are you involved in?
Obviously this is a very subjective question because "thinking" is more complex than what we perceive (there's a lot of background processes going on that we don't even realize), but I was just curious.
It feels that a lot of math would require more "verbal" thinking since making calculations in your head would be pretty difficult to do "visually" (eg I ask you to do 56 x 72 in your head, I doubt you'd do it "visually"). Obviously there more to math than arithmetic, but I think that the thought process in writing proofs is, in a sense, almost like doing arithmetic.
“…Words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined…but taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.”
I also read that Ronald Aymler Fisher was a big visual thinker too. From Wikipedia: "Lifelong poor eyesight caused his rejection by the British Army for World War I,[17] but also developed his ability to visualize problems in geometrical terms, not in writing mathematical solutions, or proofs."
I was wondering /sci/, what is your thinking mechanism like? Are you more visual or do you have an internal monologue? Also, what field of science are you involved in?
Obviously this is a very subjective question because "thinking" is more complex than what we perceive (there's a lot of background processes going on that we don't even realize), but I was just curious.
It feels that a lot of math would require more "verbal" thinking since making calculations in your head would be pretty difficult to do "visually" (eg I ask you to do 56 x 72 in your head, I doubt you'd do it "visually"). Obviously there more to math than arithmetic, but I think that the thought process in writing proofs is, in a sense, almost like doing arithmetic.
