Abstract
I THINK that all who are engaged in mechanical work and planning will fully indorse what Mr. Francis Galton says as to thought being unaccompanied by words in the mental processes gone through. Having been all my life since school-days engaged in the practice of architecture and civil engineering, I can assure Prof. Max Müller that designing and invention are done entirely by mental pictures. It is, I find, the same with original geological thought—words are only an incumbrance. For the conveyance and accumulation of knowledge some sort of symbols are required, but it appears to me that spoken language or written words are not absolutely necessary, as other means of representing ideas could be contrived. In fact, words are in many cases so cumbersome that other methods have been devised for imparting knowledge. In mechanics the graphic method, for instance.
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READE, T. Thought without Words. Nature 36, 52 (1887). https://doi.org/10.1038/036052e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/036052e0
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