Thinking like Einstein

One Hundred Fifty Third Post: Thinking like Einstein

There are several different types of intelligence. Each applies to a different type of skill. One book argues that while Einstein was an extraordinary physicist, he would lack skills to survive in a desert. Physics was his area of expertise in which he was most skilled in. Why label the different types of intelligence and study Einstein and other leaders in their fields? The answer is simple, the researchers want to find out the workings of the mind and find out what it is that makes people like Einstein special. This could lead to different ways of teaching to learning techniques that could improve people’s abilities. Also it would identify people with special abilities like Einstein.

My interest is to understand the way that Einstein thought. Of course you can only learn the way Einstein thinks by the things that he wrote. It is difficult to see how he thought in this way, but you can see the ideas and concepts he produced. And these concepts create new thoughts in the person that reads them. Writing is sort of like a foot print of the mind. It leaves an impression but one can only follow the prints with only a subtle hint of what produced them.

Perhaps, it is not as important to understand Einstein’s mind as it is to learn to use our own minds to produce our own footprints. Sure to know Einstein’s thoughts when he thought about relativity would be invaluable. It would also be impossible. The way someone thinks is comparable to an artists “style” when they draw. It is an unique signature. So the idea is not to copy another’s style but to use one’s own style to its fullest potential. Maybe what you learn from another’s ideas and how you use what is learned is more important than understanding their mind.