[GeronL]

I guess learning is a strange process. Right now they seem to just make it up as they go.

[Red Badger]

A scientist sees something and asks, “Why?”
A theorist sees something and asks, “ Why not?”...........

[SunkenCiv]

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." -- Sherlock Holmes (i.e., Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr)

[jongaltsr]

I guess learning is a strange process. Right now they seem to just make it up as they go.

THAT is an understatement.....

All learning is accidental based. If you have a creative thought it can not be based on known facts otherwise it would not be "Creative".

Combining two seeming unrelated facts to create a new "creative" idea is always - an accident - (Because - Why did or how did you get the idea to select these two (or more) ideas if it had never been done before?

It has to be an accident because all accepted "knowledge" comes from proven facts which in itself takes time (sometimes -eons) to prove or disprove before it is accepted as a proven fact.

Being Creative involves putting a little of this with a little of that and seeing what happens. If you get a result, you try to recreate the first test, then you have to justify your logic for selecting those two ideas, or materials with a hypothysis which requires theorizing what would happen if you changed one or another of the ideas (materials) and be able to predict the outcome. IF you can do that you may have the truth and "You have learned something new".

The problem is that someone else may come along and produce a result which is different because they varied some other variable you did not allow for or even think of. You are back at square one and have to justify both your result and the variable that created another result under what you thought was the same conditions.

-- -- -- and sometimes BS is just BS.

[Delta 21]

Two Earth-sized planets .....what is generally known .... But a new theory suggests that they may have once ....Some of the work astronomers do gravitates toward the theoretical....attempt to explain .... had posited a theory ...they had invited others to speculate as well. ...presenting the idea....it most likely ...Further studies have revealed what might be .......a presence that could also be .... Before this discovery, the prevailing theory was ....It was also believed ... proposed a "truly interesting alternative to our scenario."...

Why? Whatever do you mean??