RS wrote: "My only point was that it doesn't take many individuals to
advance an entire population."
There is some sense here.
The seed intelligence usually provides inspiration for all later works and
ideas.The individual intelligence vs. the collective intelligence (group
mind, collective conscious) distincions look to be the most fashionable
subject of intellectual discussions.
But we all personally know that an individual mind has more plasticity,
dynamics, and freedom unlike the inertial collective reason, common
intelligence, ideas, beliefs,...,seemingly. existing independently of
individual persons. (01)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Randall R Schulz" <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "[ontolog-forum] "
<ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 5:39 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] memory loss (02)
> Hello,
>
> Are people overlooking the statement by Paulo to which
> I was responding in the first place:
>
> On Sunday October 11 2009, Paola Di Maio wrote:
>> Amazing to see how far we got, given the
>> inherent limitations of our human nature
>
> My only point was that it doesn't take many individuals
> to advance an entire population.
>
>
> On Sunday October 11 2009, Ian Bailey wrote:
>> Hi Randall,
>>
>> You wrote "The relatively small minority of people with the cognitive
>> abilities and proclivities to do science and engineering are enough
>> to move the human race forward"
>>
>> Aside from the inference that artists haven't moved the human race
>> forward, I don't think you can lump engineers and scientists together
>> quite so easily. The two communities think very differently, and
>> probably have very different "cognitive abilities". Most scientists
>> would argue that engineers don't actually have any cognitive
>> abilities, and we'd be happy to bandy insults with them too, if we
>> thought they'd get the joke.
>
> They are not lumped and the lumping you suggest is not actually implied
> by what I wrote. Both science and engineering are required, though for
> a very long time, the world's inventors proceeded without a lot of
> scientific grounding. That has become very unlikely to yield real
> innovation any more. Consider the transistor; it could not have been
> invented based on any intuition or trial and error. It's developers had
> to understand that most counter-intuitive of the sciences, quantum
> mechanics.
>
> As for the contributions of the arts, which naturally I do appreciate,
> they are of a wholly different character and don't help feed people,
> create better shelter, make them more healthy or give them more or
> better options for how to live or "make a living" (in the general sense
> of sustaining one's corporeal being).
>
>
>> It's true that engineers tend to use the products of scientific
>> discovery (at least the 1% of those that actually stand true outside
>> the laboratory), but I think it requires a different mindset to be a
>> good engineer to that required to be a good scientist.
>
> Of course. Why do you read what I wrote as a suggesting any single
> mindset?
>
> What I wrote is not a deep truth, but simply an empirical observation. A
> minority of people do either science or engineering and these are the
> things that create material advancement in the quality of human life.
>
>
>> Cheers
>> --
>> Ian
>
>
> Randall Schulz
>
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