Our minds require external scaffolding to perform complex intellectual feats

[[ 2021-04-05 ]] #cognition-augmentation [[ B-How To Take Smart Notes ]]

It’s clear from reading smart notes that in order to perform intellectual feats of great proportion (for example, those that advance human knowledge in historic ways) the mind is reliant on external scaffolding.

“Philosophers, neuroscientists, educators and psychologists like to disagree in many different aspects on how the brain works. But they no longer disagree when it comes to the need for external scaffolding. Almost all agree nowadays that real thinking requires some kind of externalization, especially in the form of writing. “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible” is one of the key takeaways in a contemporary handbook of neuroscientists (Levy 2011, 290) Concluding the discussions in this book, Levy writes: “In any case, no matter how internal processes are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinely concerned with what enables human beings to perform the spectacular intellectual feats exhibited in science and other areas of systematic enquiry, as well as in the arts, they need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.” (Ibid.) (1415-1421)” [@ahrensHowTakeSmart2017]