Herb writes: ".  In fact, my experience is that a majority are not
religious.  Yet the accounts of significant contributions to our knowledge
of the physical world often begin with an intuitive leap of faith. 

The notion of intuition itself needs to be analyzed. Susanne Langer, in
Philosophy in a New Key, gives the following description.

Suppose, she writes, someone admitted that All men are mortal, and that
Socrates is a man, but could not see that _therefore_, Socrates was mortal.
That would be a failure of intuition. In other words, formal logic depends
on continuous acts of intuition. Whether we should see that intuition as a
"leap of faith" is another question. And there are undoubtedly other views
of intuition than Langer's; I just happen to be familiar with hers.


Carrol

________________________________________
From: Science for the People Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of herb fox
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 1:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: To Keep the Faith, Don't Get Analytical

I am neither trained nor well read in the field of psychology.  My
analytical/critical reading of the article provokes the following.

One would take physicists to be on average analytical thinkers.  In fact, my
experience is that a majority are not religious.  Yet the accounts of
significant contributions to our knowledge of the physical world often begin
with an intuitive leap of faith.  The physicist then applies her analytical
capabilities to determine if what she feels intuitively is, in fact, what
does happen. [Note: i do not distinguish here between mathematical analysis
and physical experiment]

This suggests an interpenetration of the analytic and intuitive.  For the
intuitive leap of faith of a physicist is informed by a lot of prior
analytical thinking and knowledge.

I would imagine that a nun who taught 7th grad math when confronted by the
bat and ball problem would immediately blurt out the correct answer without
much analytic thought.  That suggests that rote learning and intuitive
thinking are related.  Someone trained by memorizing the catechism might
also learn by memorizing certain patterns.  How then would one be able to
distinguish an intuitive response from a response from rote memory?



herb

On 4/28/2012 1:06 PM, Kamran Nayeri wrote: 
A while ago, there was a discussion on this list about rationality, religion
and the political process (in the context of the rise of religious parties
in the Middle East and North Africa and elsewhere). Here is another piece
from Science Now.  Kamran 

To Keep the Faith, Don't Get Analytical