Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This map of the physical world seems to work quite well. It provides the engineer with
the basic understanding to design and build things that had not previously existed. The
understanding of the physical scientist in the hands of the skilled engineer is rendered
into airplanes, computers, mobile phones, computer games, new material for clothing,
sandals, and on and on. Wherever you look, whatever you see, if it was not built by
human hands, such hands modified it. This history of being able to modify the physical
world is empirical evidence that the scientist's mental map of these things is very good,
which is to say that the map is a faithful rendition of physical phenomena.
The success of science does not mean that the map of the physical world is the same
as the physical world, or even that the map stands in one-to-one correspondence to the
physical world. What it means is that scientists have succeeded in developing codes that
enable them to manipulate symbols and predict the outcome of certain actions done
within the world. The codes are the mathematical representation of natural laws at
the heart of physics and chemistry, and to a somewhat lesser extent the life sciences,
and the actions they perform are experiments. The more physical the phenomenon the
more closely the mental calculations correspond to what occurs in the real world. These
manipulations result in the formulation of predictions, anticipating in quantitative detail
the outcome of experiments.
When one establishes the conditions for an experiment and uses natural law to pre-
dict the outcome of that experiment, does that lead to understanding? In the physical
sciences it is often stated that we understand a phenomenon only when we can predict
its behavior and verify that prediction by experiment. A prediction enables us to tran-
scribe one set of numbers into another set of numbers and vindicate that both sets of
numbers exist within our mental map. The map must be sufficiently complex that the
transcription can be manifested by means of a well-designed experiment. What we need
to determine is whether or not this ability to anticipate or reproduce patterns in data is
the same as understanding.
For some there is no difference between predicting and understanding. For example,
if one could predict the change in the prices of stocks over time one could make a great
deal of money. In the real world making money is a true indicator of understanding. The
truth of this lies in the expression “If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?,” for which
we never found a satisfactory response, or at least not to a person who would think such
a charge had merit. But, in any event, for some people anticipating the consequences of
an action is indistinguishable from understanding.
We are not born with a mental map of the world, we construct them from our expe-
rience. Sometimes the construction is conscious, as in the study of science, but more
often than not the map building goes on when we are least aware. In any event we spend
the first two decades of life constructing the map and the next two decades trying to
understand what we have built and deconstruct it, so that the last two decades can be
enjoyed. Very often the most prominent features of our mental map have little to do
with the world in which we live and a great deal to do with our reaction to that world.
How is it that siblings raised in a single household can turn out so differently, one a
philanthropist and another a serial killer? Well, maybe not usually that extreme, but on
the whole very different, even when both parents are present throughout the children's
