We'll Show You That You Can Build

If You Understand Something In Only One Way, Then You Don't Really Understand It At All. The Secret Of What Anything Means To Us Depends On How We've Connected It To All Other Things We Know. Well-connected Representations Let You Turn Ideas Around In Your Mind, To Envision Things From Many Perspectives Until You Find One That Works For You. And That's What We Mean By Thinking!

Each Part Of The Mind Sees Only A Little Of What Happens In Some Others, And That Little Is Swiftly Refined, Reformulated And "represented." We Like To Believe That These Fragments Have Meanings In Themselves - Apart From The Great Webs Of Structure From Which They Emerge - And Indeed This Illusion Is Valuable To Us Qua Thinkers - But Not To Us As Psychologists - Because It Leads Us To Think That Expressible Knowledge Is The First Thing To Study.

We'll Show You That You Can Build A Mind From Many Little Parts, Each Mindless By Itself.

Experience Has Shown That Science Frequently Develops Most Fruitfully Once We Learn To Examine The Things That Seem The Simplest, Instead Of Those That Seem The Most Mysterious.

General Fiction Is Pretty Much About Ways That People Get Into Problems And Screw Their Lives Up. Science Fiction Is About Everything Else.