A Solid Intellectual Mind

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There is a huge difference between collecting data and ordering it in a coherent and consistent form. To know a great many unrelated observations is not intelligent. Intelligence is involved with observing inter-related patterns in various collections of data and abstracting those patterns so that they can be applied to previously unintegrated masses of data.

Yep. It's not a matter of what you know, but how you interpret what you know. Anyone can memorize what they've read in a textbook, but it takes intellect to wisely put it into context, though I do agree that mental masturbation is pointless and you should be able to apply that knowledge.

Although application is vitally useful, many abstract fields investigate interesting patterns with no use in mind and later discover wide applications when common patterns are perceived. Mathematics is a classical field of exploration and later discoveries of utility.

Big difference between acquiring, or more accurately developing knowledge for the purpose of advancing some particular field, and collecting knowledge simply to satisfy one's own curiosity.

Yeah you're right on that. Paradigm shifts (God I cringe every time I have to use that word) are definitely useful for a field to evolve.

And now I found the place where iamnotaparakeet and I converge. People with the narrow vision of applicability depend on the discoveries of people with the wider vision of curiosity.

Yes. The former is a narrow vision. The latter is a wide vision that sometimes serves the narrow vision. I don't call somebody an intellectual if they aren't curious about things with no immediately clear application. A true intellectual wants to know because they are curious.

No no noooooooooooo.....

Our mindsets are so different that my Theory of Mind is crumbling into bite-size pieces. You don't think knowing just to know is important?

Curiosity, an insatiable hunger for knowledge, and a need to understand cause (the why's and how's) wrapped up nicely with self discipline and determination. You'll find those features amongst the wisest of solid thinkers throughout history. Not all intellectuals have to be exceptionally brilliant, just patient enough to stay with a problem long enough to come to a solid conclusion. Einstein was famous for saying "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.", yet I'd definitely list him as one of the most brilliant thinkers the world has produced.

just my two cents.

edit, I'd also put Johannes Kepler in that category of not exceptionally brilliant, but he definitely fits the bill as defined.

Last edited by cw10 on 14 Jun 2011, 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There's nothing wrong with it... Intellectuals are probably just capable of more.

Without a desire for knowledge in and of itself, a person would be less inclined to learn such subjects as trigonometry which do not seem immediately important while studying them, but later on when studying physics its application is immediately relevant.

Intellectual antennae topic

The neuronal connections in the brain are capable of storing, analyzing, reflecting, interpreting, questioning, synthesizing...an intellectual finds so many ways with all that knowledge.

There is joy in that urge to know.

I'm the same as you. My value for knowledge is certainly based on an emotional value.

Wa ho!.

Okay, I am no longer the young punk who used to maintain [to a very few people] that knowledge which could be applied was ipso facto devalued. That young punk had a lot of attitude problems and I am glad he has shut up.

BUT - I have to go with Janissy on this one.

In the first place, some of us are designed and driven to research and investigate and check and test - we breathe in oxygen and data and exhale CO2 and analyses. Some of it may be useful - there are a few languages and linguyistic concepts I could teach you. Others? How useful is it to be able to recide a few of the places on earth where the local word for "cat" is close to "miao"?

Doesn't matter - we can't help it, we are built that way.

But there is the second place. A piece of sterile knowledge with no application TODAY may hook up tomorrow with another barren factoid and generate a large family of productive scientific hypotheses and a few great inventions. If we only gollow up the knowledge that seems TODAY to promise to be productive, we are going to miss a lot.

This is one of the reasons we need more discussion across specialization boundaries - the guy who never travels thinks his momma is a great cook, and linguists can learn from psychologists and vice versa.