MADS HAAHR,
Sir, - In your edition of January 31st, Dr William Reville denounces intuition as a tool for increasing our understanding of the world. However, his notion of intuition is mistaken.
What he calls intuition (such as the perception and succeeding belief that the world is flat) is better described as naive conjecture. The Cambridge International Dictionary defines intuition as "an ability to understand or know something immediately without needing to think about it, learn it or discover it by using reason".
In reality, intuition plays an important role in scientific research. Scientists often have unexplainable "hunches" which are subsequently explored (i.e., subjected to the scientific method); and these sometimes form the basis for new theories. Such spontaneous glimpses of insight have played a particularly significant role for some of the most brilliant scientists of the last century.
Albert Einstein is perhaps the most famous of these, but also Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA relied to a great extent on the two scientists' intuitive abilities. (Their discovery is recorded in Watson's book The Double Helix, published by Penguin.)
In short, intuition does not deserve to be pitted against science in the way that Dr Reville suggests.
Hand in hand with the scientific method, intuition forms a powerful tool which science may not yet understand, but without which scientists would not have achieved what they have today. - Yours, etc.,
MADS HAAHR,
Lecturer in Computer Science,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.