And symphonies (!) by age eight

I haven't read the book but $ 5 says Weisberg is full of shit.

In Weisberg's defense he would argue that Mozart acquired enough vertical expertise by four to compose via analogical thinking, similar to Edison applying four or so basic concepts over-and-over-and-over again, until he got a “hit.”

Weisberg could write a very valuable and readable book on the importance of left-brain thinking and analogical thinking. But by outright-denying insightful thinking, and bizarrely attacking horizontal thinking, he limits his reach.

So far the reading list has been entirely interesting and thought-provoking, which already puts it heads-and-tails over “1 good book” [1] classes, and the prof is excellent.

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/08/30/the-only-text-at-unl-so-far-worth-anything.html

He's still wrong on a good bit, but this clears up some of my misunderstanding.

Well, if he does say that, then Weisberg's peddling rubbish easily refuted by an endless series of examples from the history of physics, music or art.

Beethoven, for example, may have created symphonies in the laborious manner Weisberg described but Mozart generally did not, frequently ” hearing” music in his head. Beethoven, Edison and George Washington Carver were ” tinkering” incrementalists as creators – Mozart, Tesla, Archimedes and so on were insighters who at times had ideas that apparently were not preceded by anything directly relevant to their discoveries, except perhaps, acute observation. Both methods are useful in the sense of being productive but they are not the same thing in terms of cognition.

DeBono's methods involve methodical examination so he's wrong on that as well. Intuition comes into play later but DeBono's initial exercises are structured and logical. He doesn't start with intuition but with a frame – ” Plus, Minus, Interesting”, “Consider All Factors”, “Purpose, Input, Solutons, Choice” and so on.

Good post. Gibberish is an apt description.

Weisberg: “Furthermore, there is no convincing evidence for the occurrence of insight during creative thinking. The Gestalt psychologists and their followers postulated leaps of insight, which were assumed to result in the sudden appearance of complete solutions to a problem.”

Yet note the hedge that follows:

“Contrary to the Gestalt view, scientific attempts to study insight have found that solution of insight problems depends on detailed knowledge about the type of problem being solved.”

In other words, Weisberg is arguing against leaping horizontal thinking, because vertical thinking is also important. The thinking is muddled.

Weisberg spends time criticizing self-reports generally, and the standard view of Mozart specifically

“The few Mozart sketches that do exist indicate that he typically wrote the melody and bass lines as he composed, and filled in the other parts later, which contradicts the naive view that Mozart simply had the whole composition mentally available.” (224)

Weiserg also mentions the “Mozart letter,” and is rather dismissive of what would be an amazing feet

“However, the use of the term “parts” in the “letter” refers not to the parts of a composition, such as the movements of a symphony, but to the parts of the orchestra. This mans that he hears in his imagination the whole orchestra playing together, which is not the extraordinary feat that has been inferred from the lettter.”

Regardless, Weisberg concludes that Mozart never wrote that letter at all (46).

Somewhat relatedly, Slashdot [1] just linked to an article on human bayesian calculations [2] that's worth reading.

[1] http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/02/02/2343232.shtml
[2] http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5354696