Digital BW, The Print

Truman writes:

> To quote one of the best equine veterinarians
> in the world, Dane Frazier, DVM, PhD; "Study
> principles, not methods. The mind that grasps
> principles will devise its own methods."

Richard Feymann, the famous physicist, said essentially the same thing.

The only problem with this philosophy is that it requires much smarter
students than the simple rote memorization of methods and procedures.  Even
dim bulbs can follow a procedure; but one must be considerably more
intelligent to grasp a principle and invent a procedure of one's own.

> To understand an use the principles one does not
> have to know the formulas, details in the chemistry
> of developer X vs. developer Y, but one needs to
> know there is a difference and to have a "feel,"
> (we mathematicians/physicists call it intuition),
> for what will happen.

"Feel" is a romantic word for reasoning ability.  Physicists and
mathematicians "feel" when they see the logic in something but cannot quite
write it out yet.  This is different from the "feel" that artists have,
which is based on their own emotions and typically does not reflect any
specific line of reasoning.

> The students in the early to mid 70's knew principles
> and were able to reason. The students starting about 82,
> knew fact and there ability to reason with those
> facts were limited - they weren't taught to do so.

The advantage to teaching facts is that it requires less intelligence, and
thus allows all students to perform more or less the same, which is the
current politically-correct goal of most educational systems.

But all of this is far, far away from the nominal topic of this list.