Several times in my life I have been infuriated by people contradicting something I said that I knew was true. (“You can’t cross the border between Georgia and North Carolina. They don’t border each other”. I have only done it about fifteen times.)
One of the most annoying are the people who tell me I can’t think without words. This seems to be the opinion mostly of logicians and computer scientists (but I think only a minority of them). When I am concentrating on math or on a physical repair job I USUALLY think without words. And in many other situations as well. The result is that when someone asks me what I am doing I am literally at a loss for words. I have to deconcentrate and come up with a verbal explanation of the nonverbal thinking I was doing. Which makes me look as if I don’t “know” what I am doing.
When I need to memorize the sequence 6785 (part of our car’s license number) I visualize the numbers 5678 with the five leapfrogging over the other numbers to end up on the right. I don’t say the numbers, I picture them. This has enabled me to write down the license number on the motel application without having to drop my bags and dash out the door to look at the car, which is usually parked the wrong way for me to see the back end.
When I stare at a chain of gears to see which way one of them goes when I turn another one, I visualize the turning of each intermediate one, one at a time. I don’t say or think “clockwise, counterclockwise” and so on, I see them turning and I feel kinetically the top of one going clockwise moving to the right – I sort of feel MY top (shoulders and arms) moving to the right.
When I see a pullback diagram I feel the upper left corner being pushed down and to the right so as to be the last corner of all the squares with the same bottom and right edge. I don’t think the words “pullback square” unless I am in the process of trying to formulate a claim about it.
I learned that I do this from reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That really wasn’t the main point of that book but it is what I remember most vividly from reading it.
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