From Paul Ellis
The idea that you can “let your body do the thinking” may go back further and wider than you suppose (27 March, p 5 and p 8).
When the mathematician Jacques Hadamard was doing the research that formed the basis of his book in the late 1930s, he asked Albert Einstein about “elements in thought”. Einstein responded: “The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type.”
Perhaps such a kinaesthetic approach to thought is sensible when trying to conceive of the curved space of general relativity.
From Peter Harrison
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As I read of Tobias Loetscher’s finding that when people think of a number smaller than the previous one they look to the left and down, I found myself imagining larger numbers to the left and farther down than smaller ones.
I realised I was subconsciously thinking of a spreadsheet. It seems a lifetime of using tables with headings across the top and down the left has completely obliterated the influences of my early years.
Fetcham, Surrey, UK
London, UK
