It's common to misinterpret an apparent facility for a certain activity as "talent", an uncontrolable result of the toss of the genetic dice. In most cases, I think, the facility has actually been encouraged in many ways, though some may be subtle, by the parent or anyone in a position to influence a child. In any event, it hasn't been discouraged.
I agree. Children are relatively plastic, possibly because their experiential frames of reference are relatively uncomplicated. I think of the progressive effects of momentary experience like paint of different colors being poured at a constant rate into a large holding tank. A lot of the incoming paint tends to be like a lot of paint already there. Anyway, if the tank is more or less empty at birth, early experience moves the paint's collective hue more than experience later on.
I understand your sense of weariness with Einstein's secret; my point wasn't to seek Einstein's mind so much as to put his habits of mind as a exemplar of efficient habits of mind. I think that follows Capablanca's skill in sizing up chess positions, generally speaking, the point of
The Expert Mind.
I've attached text of (
Hadamard's Question) and Einstein's reply to show Hadamard's hopeful intent to know more about Einstein's facility with concepts. Einstein made some effort to cooperate, and, as you read the second attachment, you might conclude his answer was astute, albeit so brief as to be cryptic. On the other hand, I doubt that Hadamard or many reader's of Einstein's answer would have understood his answer in the more clinical sense presented by the second attachment (
Generation Speed in RPMs).
Generation Speed isn't about Einstein's thinking per se, but it might be about it, or it might be useful in its own right.
Sorry, I can't seem to master the art of file attachment. I get an Internet Explorer "object required" error, and the error doesn't seem to follow my email attachment experience. Will try attachment again later today.
I think of Hadamard's discussion with Einstein, jump from that to
Generation Speed, and then think of ways to recode the duo so as to represent their convolution in a visual metaphor that might have general utility to individuals who might not apprehend them otherwise. That recoding from objects of clinical research to something more apprehensible stands for many other habits of mind and ways of thinking as well.
If I wanted to know more about a physicist's mind, I might try to interview a live one, beg Lisa Randall, for instance, to do something on the order of what Hadamard asked of Einstein. Here, the point wouldn't exactly be to know how Lisa looks at the physical Universe and what she makes of it so much as to probe her thinking for structure, representive forms and progressions, perhaps then to contrast forms and progressions from person to person and purpose to purpose. I've done something like that introspectively (and superficially, to be honest) with Ravens Progressive Matrices. While I can't say my productions were a good as they might have been given more effortful study, I think RPM translations from raw matrices to visual cues and rule types aren't difficult at all...probably duck soup for a good game programmer.
And, by extension, for many other useful habits of mind and ways of thinking.
