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For the Intellect

Book by Lucy Carter · 24 quotes · Math, Philosophy, Education

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For the Intellect Quotes

“Experience was what Galileo considered key to formulating accurate theories, since experience, which is literally defined as exposure to and observation of facts and events, gives one a tangible, real-life occurrence that substantiates a statement, rather than raw logic, which leads one to consider what’s plausible based on probability and deduction but not necessarily what’s true. Raw logic, Galileo knew, could lead one to discover a possibility, but not an actuality. Experience exposes the facts of the REAL WORLD, not what logic and reasoning, or the mind alone can create. Aristotle did not want to rely on abstractions and intangibilities, but in reality, he did, as he used sole logic.”

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“There is one thing I enjoy about STEM: I love how words such as therefore, because, since, and thus can often be used to deeply comprehend a topic in math and science. These words all precede some form of logical deduction, and that is what makes STEM so beautiful: with math and science, you can always learn the logic behind everything. From quantum mechanics to biomedicine, science always finds a way to explain the universe.”

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“Wait,” one of the apes objected, “we have never driven a car! What if we destroy everything? The humans might use our lack of experience to add stronger restrictions to apes, and we might look incapable.” “Well,” another member insisted, “that would be absurd. It’s not our fault that we are inexperienced! The humans were the ones who did not give us access to the experience we need! It’s in their nature: discrimination. I mean, they even restricted each other from having education, voting, and career rights!”

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“The customary units of measurement? They have practical applications, but learning them is mostly done through rote memorization— There aren’t any proofs or critical evaluations regarding REASONS why a foot equals twelve inches There are only facts to memorize, but not puzzles to solve, With algebra—YES! There isn’t just memorization— There is the rearrangement of jigsaw pieces— jigsaw pieces that you can solve, not just memorize!”

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“Subjects such as history have less of that problem solving relationship. Because history is driven by human nature, one cannot merely hypothesize what happened; one must, unfortunately, resort to memorization. To analyze history, one must memorize a fact, but STEM enables students to analyze the logic behind a STEM occurrence or phenomenon throughout. STEM is a subject of problem solving. STEM is problem solving.”

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“I used the role of fight-or-flight in human survival as an excuse to justify my addiction to depression and anxiety; I saw them as survival traits, believing that I would perish without them. However, the key here is that fight-or-flight is an automatic physiological reaction, making it often more dependent on instinct, not initiative. When a person starts getting stressed, or when their fight-or-flight response is activated, they don’t carefully evaluate whether or not this is something worth getting anxious about; they just get anxious automatically. Having their brains become numb, their hearts palpitate, and their adrenaline course their veins just happens automatically; you don’t intentionally control that. That is what makes the woman so blank and emotionless—it is her, or my, strict and rigid dependency on fight-or-flight! By being so deeply contingent on an automatic instinct, I had little time for true introspection. It is like the instinct controlled me, instead of the other way around.”

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“I constantly repeated these notions to myself, spending hours stroking and probing the cube. The outcomes? I still had not succeeded in solving the rubik’s cube! I did not even solve a single side! I was not at all able to find a feasible method to deal with simultaneous permutations of combinations, nor find ways to lead my hands into dexterous motions... Nonetheless, for another hour, I persisted in repeating these notions, hoping I might be able to solve the cube.”

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“Yes, questions continue, since the notions I used only represented the what’s instead of the how’s, the why’s, the when’s, etc. Like what happened in the lectures, the facts were enforced, but nothing was done to dive deeper into them. Finally, I was eventually able to solve one side of the rubik’s cube, now realizing that I had inadvertently taught myself the same way I had been lectured. I realized how even the Rubik’s cube can generate rudimentary and superficial knowledge in a user.”

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“A parabola opens at a certain direction, allowing for infinitely many points to reside inside the area from which it opens. As a student, I do not like to specialize in a single discipline; specialization seems unfulfilling in my own mind. Hence, the graph of a straight line is not an appropriate analogy to the depths of my curiosity. A line only goes in one direction, and unlike a parabola, a line cannot encase that infinite amount of white space on a coordinate plane—it can only pass through it. Rather than being like a rigid line, I try to be more open to a wider variety of academic subjects. I do admit—a parabola still opens in a certain direction, and of course, my interests are still skewed toward particular subjects. However, the open curve of the parabola can still encompass infinitely many points as the graph extends, the same way my curiosity can still expand to multiple different subjects. This is why I see myself more in the curvaceous parabola than the rigid line.”

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“Suppose every life was written as a storybook; assuming this was true, the only storybook each person would completely know is their own. I know my own story, as I own my own thoughts and my own consciousness. Hence, I have not finished reading the books of other lives, because I am still writing my own. Therefore, since I live in and am the main character of my own book, I appear to be at the center of life itself. From my vantage point, I’m at the center of the world—I have not finished the stories of others, because I’m at the center of my own. This is why I compare myself to the midpoint formula: the midpoint does not begin a line nor end the line, but rather becomes a part of it—from an individualistic vantage point, I am a part of or even at the center of life itself.”

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