Book Hangout
On Air
November 11, 2015
Quotes / Comments from Sparks of Genius (Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein)
1. The desire to understand must be whipped together with sensual and emotional feelings and blended with intellect to yield imaginative insight. (p. 5)
2. It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover…Logic teaches us that on such and such a road we are sure of not meeting an obstacle; it does not tell us which is the road that leads to the desired end. (p. 10)
3. If you can’t conceive of things that don’t exist, you can’t create anything new. If you can’t dream up worlds that might be, then you are limited to the worlds other people describe. You see reality through their eyes, not your own. (Paul Horgan, p. 22)
4. …when the man learned to whom he was speaking (Picasso) he began to complain about the ways that modern art distorts reality. Picasso demanded to know what was a faithful representation of reality. The man produced a wallet-sized photo and said “There! This picture – that’s what my wife really looks like.” Picasso looked at it from several angles, turning it up and down and sideways and said “she looks awfully small. And flat.” (p. 24)
5. A man rowing a boat dropped his hat into a river which is flowing 3 km per hour downstream. He is rowing upstream 2 km per hour faster than the stream is taking him down. He discovers his hat is missing one half-hour after it has fallen in the river. If he turns around and rows back at the same speed relative to the river to fetch his hat, how long will it take to catch up to it? (approach algebraically and geometrically: p. 68)
6. Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that he could talk for a day with five minutes’ notice and needed a day to prepare if he had only five minutes in which to speak. (p. 77)
7. “I’ll tell you what you need to be a great scientist. You don’t have to be able to understand very complicated thinks. It’s just the opposite. You have to be able to see what looks like the most complicated thing in the world and, in a flash, find the underlying simplicity. That’s what you need: a talent for simplicity.” (Mitchell Wilson, p. 78)
8. Wonderful elegant “proof” of the fact that 1 + ½ + ¼ + 1/8 ….. = 2 (p. 103)
9. Synthesizer using Fourier analysis, made by Hermann Von Helmholtz, can produce a Bach cantata, sitar or sarangi music from India, shamisen or koto music from Japan, or the heaviest metal band music. And it does so by adding trigonometric functions. Now that’s universality. (author: p. 126)
10. Making patterns for oneself is a lot more fun than memorizing – and a lot more valuable. Teasing apart one pattern and composing another requires real understanding of the basic elements of phenomena and processes. More, it opens up whole new worlds of knowledge. (author: p. 135)
11. So we should give children toys that they can use in many ways. Let them adapt blocks, simple dolls, paper, cloth, and household items to as many scenarios as they can imagine. (author: p. 156)
12. Indeed, many medical educators assert that the ability to become, transiently, one’s patient is a skill that differentiates the best clinicians from the rest……The empathetic caregiver recognizes the patient’s unspoken fear when an unfamiliar test or procedure is ordered. (author: p. 184 Reminds me of Dr. Paul Brand in “The Gift of Pain”)
13. The physicist Feynman could not have foreseen how quickly his determination to play would lead to something interesting. “Within a week,” he later recalled, “I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell going around…” He went on to work on equations for the wobbles, delving into relativity, electrodynamics, and quantum electrodynamics. (p. 250)
14. Engineer Henry Petroski and neurobiologist Arthur Yuwiler noted that many or their professional skills were developed by taking apart clocks, watches, fixing old bicycles and radios, and making things just for the fun of it when they were young. (p. 256)
15. Using mnemonic devices to remember something: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. OIL RIG (p. 277)
It reminded me of K P C O F G S (Kingdom Phylum……) or Roy G Biv (colors)
16. ….data in every field are converted into graphs and visual images of one sort or another. It is impossible to open a newspaper or magazine or watch a news report without being bombarded with transformed data. Tufte’s books focus on the principles by which such transformations can best be accomplished. (p. 283)
17. …What’s more, the ears can observe complexity that the eyes cannot. Eyes can follow only a single line, one pattern at a time. When we listen to a musical ensemble, however, we hear each individual instrument even as we hear the harmony that results from their interaction. (author: p. 285)
18. Sir James Lighthill: swims 3 miles every weekend to keep fit AND reminds himself of the math and physics of fluids (p. 297 reminds me of Steve Matson almost drowning in FL – buoyancy of water)
19. The challenge in modern life and education still remains to reintegrate poetry and physics, art and chemistry, music and biology, dance and sociology, and every other possible combination of aesthetic and analytical knowledge, to foster people who feel that they want to know and know what they want to feel. (author: p. 313)
20. …..to reach the widest range of minds, ideas in every discipline should be presented in many forms. (author: p. 318)
21. Recent studies have found that the best predictor of career success in any field is not IQ, grades, or standardized test scores but participation in one or more mentally intensive leisuretime activities or hobbies – anything from painting, composing music, or writing poetry to programming computers, creating videos, or playing around with scientific ideas or mathematics. This is true for business entrepreneurs and CEOs; it is true for artists, academics, and entertainers. (author: p. 323)