Intuition quotes

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Christopher_Wolfgang_Alexander

Complexity

“Today more and more design problems are reaching insoluble levels of complexity... In spite of their superficial simplicity, even these problems have a background of needs and activities which is becoming too complex to grasp intuitively.”

Jim_Baggott

The Theory Principle

“The Theory Principle. Although physical theories are constructed to describe empirical facts about reality, they are nevertheless founded on abstract mathematical (we could even say metaphysical) concepts. The process of abstraction from facts to theories is highly complex, intuitive and not subject to simple, universal rules applicable to all science for all time. In the act of scientific creation, any approach is in principle valid provided it yields a theory that works.”
  • Source: Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (p. 17). Pegasus Books. New York, NY.

Reinout_Willem_van_Bemmelen

Validity of Hypothesis

“The functional validity of a working hypothesis is not a priori certain, because often it is initially based on intuition. However, logical deductions from such a hypothesis provide expectations (so-called prognoses) as to the circumstances under which certain phenomena will appear in nature. Such a postulate or working hypothesis can then be substantiated by additional observations ... The author calls such expectations and additional observations the prognosis-diagnosis method of research. Prognosis in science may be termed the prediction of the future finding of corroborative evidence of certain features or phenomena (diagnostic facts). This method of scientific research builds up and extends the relations between the subject and the object by means of a circuit of inductions and deductions.”
  • Source: Reinout Willem van Bemmelen. In 'The Scientific Character of Geology', The Journal of Geology (Jul 1961), 69, No. 4, 454-5.

Claude_Bernard

Experimental Method Object

“The object of the experimental method is to transform this ‘a priori’ conception, based on an intuition or a vague feeling about the nature of things, into an ‘a posteriori’ interpretation founded on the experimental study of phenomena.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Chapter II, page 27. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.
  • Note: ‘A priori’ is Latin for ‘from the earlier’. ‘A posteriori’ is Latin for ‘from the later’.

Nigel_Cross

Conventional Problem Solving

"Conventional wisdom about problem-solving seems often to be contradicted by the behavior of expert designers. But designing has many differences from conventional problem-solving. ... we must be very wary about importing models of design behavior from other fields. Empirical studies of design activity have frequently found 'intuitive' features of design ability to be the most effective and relevant to the intrinsic nature of design. Some aspects of design theory, however, have tried to develop counter-intuitive models and prescriptions for design behavior."

Peter_Drucker

Intuitive Management

“The days of the 'intuitive' manager are numbered.”
  • Source: Peter Drucker, “The Practice of Management” New York,: Harper, 1st ed. 1954 ; Routledge, 2012, p. 93.

Keywords: Day_quotes Intuition_quotes Manager_quotes Number_quotes

Albert_Einstein

Intuition and Inspiration

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. ... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”
  • Source: Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138.

David_Epstein

Ill-Defined Problems

“Human intuition, it appears, is not very well engineered to make use of the best tools when faced with what the researchers called ‘ill-defined problems.’”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”. Published 2019 by Riverhead Books. Chapter 5, page 106. ISBN 978-0735214484.

Richard_Feynman

Unlike Ordinary Experience

“Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, both to the novice and to the experienced physicist. Even the experts do not understand it the way they would like to, and it is perfectly reasonable that they should not, because all of direct, human experience and of human intuition applies to large objects. We know how large objects will act, but things on a small scale just do not act that way. So we have to learn about them in a sort of abstract or imaginative fashion and not by connection with our direct experience.”

Joseph_Heller

Protective Rationalization

“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
  • Source: Heller, Joseph. 'Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition'. Chapter 34 'Thanksgiving', page 427. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Gerald_Holton

Speculation

“...guided at that moment by a speculation below the level of consciousness, a result of an intimate knowledge... built up during his years of intense study, discussions, and experimentation.”
  • Note: The article is discussing Enrico Fermi's process to solve a physics experimentation problem that came to be known as the “Miricle of the Two Tables”.

Fred_Hoyle

Scientific Hypotheses

“It is often held that scientific hypotheses are constructed, and are to be constructed, only after a detailed weighing of all possible evidence bearing on the matter, and that then and only then may one consider, and still only tentatively, any hypotheses. This traditional view however, is largely incorrect, for not only is it absurdly impossible of application, but it is contradicted by the history of the development of any scientific theory. What happens in practice is that by intuitive insight, or other inexplicable inspiration, the theorist decides that certain features seem to him more important than others and capable of explanation by certain hypotheses. Then basing his study on these hypotheses the attempt is made to deduce their consequences. The successful pioneer of theoretical science is he whose intuitions yield hypotheses on which satisfactory theories can be built, and conversely for the unsuccessful (as judged from a purely scientific standpoint).”
  • Source: Sir Fred Hoyle, Co-author with British astronomer, Raymond Arthur Lyttleton (1911-95), 'The Internal Constitution of the Stars', Occasional Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society 1948, 12, 90.

Daniel_Kahneman

Who Can We Trust

“We often interact with professionals who exercise their judgment with evident confidence, sometimes priding themselves on the power of their intuition. In a world rife with illusions of validity and skill, can we trust them? How do we distinguish the justified confidence of experts from the sincere overconfidence of professionals who do not know they are out of their depth? We can believe an expert who admits uncertainty but cannot take expressions of high confidence at face value. As I first learned on the obstacle field, people come up with coherent stories and confident predictions even when they know little or nothing. Overconfidence arises because people are often blind to their own blindness.”
  • Source: "Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence". New York Times. October 19, 2011.

Intuitive Heuristics

“This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.”

Steven_Pinker

Two Modes of Thinking

“People think in two modes. They can form fuzzy stereotypes by uninsightfully soaking up correlations among properties, taking advantage of the fact that things in the world tend to fall into clusters (things that bark also bite and lift their legs at hydrants). But people can also create systems of rules — intuitive theories — that define categories in terms of the rules that apply to them, and that treat all the members of the category equally.”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 2 Section: Connectoplasm.

Herbert_Simon

Intuition

“Intuition is a genuine enough phenomenon which can be explained rather simply: most intuitive leaps are acts of recognition.”

Patrick_Vlaskovits

Faster Horse

“However, even if Ford didn’t verbalize his thoughts on customers’ ostensible inability to communicate their unmet needs for innovative products — history indicates that Henry Ford most certainly did think along those lines... Henry Ford froze the design of the Model T... Ford had no compelling reason to innovate in any other sphere other than cost and price reduction... But everything changed with the onset of the innovations introduced by General Motors in the 1920s, which took the direct opposite of Henry Ford’s tack of “Any color … so long as it is black” and is best summed up by Alfred Sloan’s consumer-research driven “A Car for Every Purse and Purpose”... In 1921, the Ford Motor Company sold about 2/3 of all the cars built in the U.S. By 1926, this share had fallen to approximately 1/3. And in 1927, when Ford belatedly responded (at tremendous financial cost and internal strife) to changes in the market’s tastes and competitive innovation by shutting down production temporarily to re-tool his factories and bring the Model A to the market, that percentage fell to about 15%... Yes, some customers in certain types of businesses are quite capable of verbalizing precisely what sort of innovative product one could build and sell them. And of course, customers in other types of businesses are wholly incapable of verbalizing, with any sort of fidelity whatsoever, what they need and why they need it. An innovator should have understanding of one’s customers and their problems via empirical, observational, anecdotal methods or even intuition. They should also feel free to ignore customers’ inputs. Because by now it should be clear that Ford’s adherence to his vision of the mass-market car and how to materialize that vision was instrumental in both his early success in growing Ford Motor Company as well as his later failure to respond in a timely and effective manner to rapid innovation in the marketplace.”'