On page VII the book endorses the well-known pedagogical principle ideas before names.
For multiple reasons, I strongly recommend thinking about that differently. For starters, I like to say ideas are primary and fundamental, whereas terminology is tertiary. Terminology is important insofar as it helps us formulate and communicate the ideas.
Rationale: My version speaks of primacy as in emphasis, not priority as in chronology. I say ideas should be first and last. Ideas should be the foundation underneath and the finial on top.
Furthermore, it is simply impossible to fully teach (or learn) an idea before giving it a name. For details on this, including several other arguments leading to the same conclusion, see https://www.av8n.com/physics/meaning.htm
The same paragraph touts the advantages of deduction. I don't buy that either. Generally speaking, a good deductive sequence is a lousy pedagogical sequence. The order in which things are proved in a mathematical treatise is not the order in which they are learned by human beings.
On page VII the book endorses the well-known pedagogical principle
ideas before names.For multiple reasons, I strongly recommend thinking about that differently. For starters, I like to say ideas are primary and fundamental, whereas terminology is tertiary. Terminology is important insofar as it helps us formulate and communicate the ideas.
Rationale: My version speaks of primacy as in emphasis, not priority as in chronology. I say ideas should be first and last. Ideas should be the foundation underneath and the finial on top.
Furthermore, it is simply impossible to fully teach (or learn) an idea before giving it a name. For details on this, including several other arguments leading to the same conclusion, see https://www.av8n.com/physics/meaning.htm
The same paragraph touts the advantages of deduction. I don't buy that either. Generally speaking, a good deductive sequence is a lousy pedagogical sequence. The order in which things are proved in a mathematical treatise is not the order in which they are learned by human beings.
For more on this, see https://www.av8n.com/physics/meaning.htm#sec-deduction
This is related to the spiral approach as discussed in item #59.
This node is partly a discussion of the issues, and also a directory node for cataloging specific instances of the underlying idea.