The mind’s primary strength lies in its passionate pursuit of patterns. Pattern recognition is the basis for forming the categories in the brain that we call concepts. These concepts are labeled with vocabulary words, but mastery of a concept is much more than repeating a memorized definition of a vocabulary term. Concepts are formed through a process of logical justification that involves both inductive and deductive reasoning. Concept construction is the crucial prerequisite to all lasting learning.

The transcript to the podcast “Introduction to Induction” along with links to sources is found below:

In our quest this season to develop Learner’s Mind we’ve accredited a set of dispositions that include focused exploration in pursuit of new ideas that will answer questions we care about. In the last episode on childhood amnesia, it became clear that we are doomed to forget if we try to remember facts. The key to lasting learning is the formation in our mind of logical categories that we call concepts. Concepts are patterns. Concepts are our perceptions of regularities in objects, phenomena, sequences, causation, emotional states—you name it. Our brains are incorrigible pattern-seekers and that’s what generates our concepts.

We are hard-wired by our neurobiology to seek patterns and yet formal education seldom leverages this extraordinary ability. Instead, we are fed a steady diet of facts which we are expected to file (somehow) in our brains. The dominant filing method is brute force memorization. We all know from sad experience how well that works out.

In today’s podcast I want to begin to operationalize conceptualization. I’m going to take apart the idea of conceptualization so that seeking patterns becomes the basis for all your learning. Patterning must become your innate learning disposition because you will continue to be assaulted with information and your brain will continue to be a leaky sieve unless you create appropriate concept categories.

Rest assured. You can conceptualize. You’ve already demonstrated your brilliance! In your early infancy your rapidly expanding vocabulary was a source of familial pride beginning with your first word. Concept formation was the basis for those attainments. You learned to recognize the face, voice, and mannerisms of your mother and you said Mama to call for her. The specific attributes that allowed you to recognize your mother regardless of the orientation of her face or how she was dressed on a particular day was concept formation. Eventually you learned the concept of a woman and that your mother was a member of that category as well.

Concept formation employs inductive logic. Induction moves from a collection of specifics to a generalization that expresses the relationship among all the specifics. The generalization is the conclusion of inductive reasoning. The concept of your mother and of the larger category that includes your mother among all women are examples of inductive logic. In both cases you collected specifics until you felt you were justified in recognizing a pattern.

Let’s try a different example. My wife and I recently acquired a betta, a type of fish, as part of our pre-school curriculum. Let’s suppose that we have only half-baked ideas about aquarium fish. Perhaps from watching Jacques Cousteau years ago we are enchanted with schools of fish in the wild and decide to get another betta as a companion for our male. We are reasoning from specifics about fish (schools, communities) and arrive at a generalization: fish need to be in communities to thrive. That’s our inductive conclusion. Notice that the conclusion covers all fish and that it includes other concepts— communities and thriving. This conclusion covers more than the specifics that fed into it. For that reason, an inductive conclusion is often called an inductive leap. In the vernacular we say that we “jumped to a conclusion.” That’s always true with inductive reasoning because the conclusion covers more instances than the specifics that fed into it. Induction is a creative process. The conclusions are not inevitable. They may be highly individualistic and not at all obvious to others.

The creative aspect of induction can be a strength. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has been called an intuitive leap of immense proportions. In the words of another scientist, “Research is seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.” To think what no one else has thought may, however, put you straight into the world of crackpots. Take the example of the betta fish. If I think my male betta needs company to thrive, there is a good chance I’m going to be shocked. If I put another male betta in the same tank there will be a duel to the death of at least one and perhaps both males. Even a female betta won’t make it long-term in the same tank with a male. A little more study would have surfaced two more important specifics. 1. Not all fish are schooling fish and 2. Betta fish are also known as Siamese Fighting Fish, and they are extremely territorial. My generalization about fish was based on an inadequate collection of specifics!

Our inductive generalizations can be tested using deductive logic. We are more familiar with deduction than induction. In our betta example deduction would proceed like this:

Major premise: “fish need to be in communities to thrive”

Minor premise: betta are fish

Conclusion: therefore, betta need to be in communities to thrive.

The major premise will be put to a test when I attempt to create a community of betta fish. In this instance the death of one or more betta males will show me my major premise is incorrect. It would falsify my inductive conclusion. Suppose, however, I had a huge aquarium with places betta males could hide from each other. The two males might coexist because the more aggressive fish couldn’t locate the other one. In that instance I wouldn’t know my generalization was incorrect and I would go on thinking I had some fish wisdom. My inductive generalization would appear to be confirmed. It is still a flawed idea; I just don’t know it.

It isn’t uncommon for flawed induction to go on undetected. Many people are reluctant to put long-held notions to the test. Confirmation bias is characteristic of our siloed age. Many people don’t engage with the views of those with whom they disagree out of fear of the counter arguments they will encounter. Louis Pasteur rightly said, “the greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.” It is not intellectually honest to cherry pick specifics that confirm my cherished notions. Encountering contrary evidence improves my thinking. In the end, I may disagree with the other person, but my mind is aware of the specifics that he/she use in justifying their conclusions. Augustine rightly observed that “All truth is God’s truth.”

The Christian disposition is engagement with evidence and adversaries. Note this admonition from the Apostle Paul in 2 Cor. 10: (NET)

4b “the weapons of our warfare are not human weapons, but are made powerful by God for tearing down strongholds. We tear down arguments 5 and every arrogant obstacle that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to make it obey Christ.”

Much more could be said, but let’s move back to operationalizing induction.

Neuroscientist Daniel Bor in his book, The Ravenous Brain, says neuroscience “explains our insatiable search for meaning.” We are never satisfied with just “the what.” We want the “so what.” We want to know how and why. We search for patterns because we are wired by our Creator to this end. Pattern-seeking will be rewarded because the universe overflows with patterns and they all lead us back to our Creator.

Induction is not linear, and it is not rule-based. These two realities make it challenging for the lecture-based batch-processing of large numbers of students in traditional educational systems to accommodate. Consequently, most students and adult learners have only conceptualized subliminally. We all have categories in our minds, but it isn’t obvious how they were created.

One lesson from this season of podcasts is that conceptualization is aided and abetted by focused exploration. The more specifics we encounter that are relevant to answering a question we care about, the more likely it is that we will recognize the right pattern in the specifics. My initial betta fish hypothesis example serves as a counter example. I like the image of a “ravenous” mind. We intentionally and joyfully seek out specific examples to enrich or revise our existing conceptual categories. I would call this enlargement. Without initially passing judgment, I accumulate relevant specifics. It isn’t wrong to have a hunch about how the specifics relate to create a pattern, but I would hold the emerging inductive generalization loosely. I withhold judgment until I know more.

In the process of enlargement, we will encounter ideas or examples that don’t quite seem to fit. We don’t dismiss them out of hand. Indeed, the fact that they don’t fit may be the catalyst for a major revision of our existing concept or for the creation of a new concept. In addition, however, ideas or examples that I previously bundled together may need to be removed. Perhaps they belong in a different category. Perhaps I was mistaken about the nature of the idea. Perhaps I’ve misrepresented something as evidence, or I’ve discovered the source is not trustworthy. This can happen in parallel to enlargement. I call it conceptual pruning. The tree of knowledge grows best when it is pruned. Or, to put it differently, if we allow clutter to accumulate, we can obscure the pattern we are trying to discern.

Educational curriculum and teachers can accelerate the process of conceptualization by introducing a wide range of examples including some that don’t quite fit. Asking probing questions is another productive strategy. What educators must NOT do is to simply deliver the products of their own conceptualizing.

Concepts are abstractions that are created to account for patterns in a group of specifics. Delivering an abstraction to a would-be learner undercuts the mechanism the brain uses to create and thus to retain the abstraction. It is like helping a butterfly out of its chrysalis. You kill the butterfly. The student’s struggle with specifics until they personally see the pattern is essential to lasting learning. “Aha” moments are the fruit of seeing; they are not optional.

Let’s try another example. Scotland is where my Gray family roots are. This summer my wife and I spent a month exploring Scotland. I say exploring because we intended to learn about the country and its people, including my forbearers. To achieve this objective, we shied away from packaged tours so we could actually explore without a rigid itinerary. We used public transportation (rail and buses) exclusively and we stayed in 9 different AirBnBs with Scottish hosts so we could live with Scottish people and converse with them.

As a result of focused exploration we now have a conceptual grid about the country and its people and industries. We remember lots of specifics from nearly all the major geographical regions of the country.

Long before the trip I knew a tiny bit about the clans and clan warfare. Indeed, a website called the Scotsman says, “There was no shortage of blood spilled as Scotland's ancient clans fought for reputation, wealth, territory and survival with countless lives lost as a result.”

Here’s my initial concept of a Scotsman: Scottish people are insular and combative.

I entered Scotland at the Glasgow airport and got on a bus to travel downtown. As the bus made stops, I noticed that every person who got off the bus thanked the driver. (I’m thinking) “That’s odd. He must know a number of these folks or perhaps he’s an unusually friendly fellow.”

Arriving at our first AirBnB we found our hosts to be very welcoming. “Probably just part of running a rental, ” I thought. The next morning, my wife and I found that a good breakfast had been prepared for us even though the listing said nothing about it—indeed we had bought some breakfast items at a grocery at the Glasgow airport. Hmm.

We took a walk into downtown Glasgow to get a SIM card for use in the UK. The college age techie who helped us asked us what we were there to see and made some recommendations. Very friendly and helpful. Hmm.

We took a walk to explore part of the city and wanted a better big scale map than Google so we pulled out a paper map in our guide book. Within two minutes, someone stopped and asked us if we needed directions. Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland with a metro population of 1,861,000.

This experience was repeated almost without exception all over Scotland.

I have a new inductive conclusion: Scots are friendly and helpful people. This big idea was forged by a wonderful experience with lots of delightful specifics!