MAKING THOUGHTS VISIBLE, A LESSON FROM ALBERT EINTSEIN

According to creativity expert, Michael Michalko, writing about his 'A Theory about Genius' in the wonderful book, 'Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius', creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history often relied on their visual thinking approaches to make important breakthroughs.

One great example came from Albert Einstein.

"One of the most complete descriptions of Einstein's philosophy of science, was found in a letter to his friend, Maurice Solovine. In the letter, Einstein explained the difficulty of attempting to use words to explain his philosophy of science because, as he said, he thinks about such things schematically.

The letter started with a simple drawing consisting of (1) a straight line representing E (experiences), which are given to us, and (2) A (axioms), which are situated above the line but not directly linked to the line.


[Note: This is an approximation. Einstein's original sketch is in the Albert Einstein Archives, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.]

Einstein explained that psychologically the A rests upon the E.

There exists, however, no logical path from E to A, but only an intuitive connection, which is always subject to revocation. From axioms, one can make certain deductions (S), which may lay claim to being correct.

In essence, Einstein was saying that it is the theory that determines what we observe. Einstein argued that scientific thinking is speculative, and only in its end product does it lead to a system that is characterized as "logical simplicity."

Unable to satisfactorily describe his thoughts in words, Einstein made his thought visible by diagraming his philosophy's main features and characteristics."

What intrigues most about the Einstein Sketch is the "intuitive connection" from 'E' to 'A'. That's the fuzzy part, which I like to know more about. Dilip Mukerjea likes to call it, 'Junction Dynamics'.