Learning to recognize and apply the 15 properties

Intellectually understanding the 15 fundamental properties by their definitions is not sufficient. True understanding can only be achieved by actively and practically trying (and failing, at first) to create things that have certain properties, but not just have them, but gain deeper feeling because of the presence of the property.

I use this rule to help people understand the fifteen properties: “Draw diagrams, make experiments, in which you try to make something, sketch something, which has the property in it. But it is not enough to catch the property as you believe it is defined. To succeed, you must make a thing which has the property, and which gains deeper feeling because of the presence of the property. Only when you have managed that, can you be sure that the meaning of the property has not eluded you.”

It takes years — perhaps three, five, ten years — to learn the process of making centers, and to know what it means to make a center come to life. In the meantime, the properties are a very useful tool; they are a way of focusing our attention on the centers. By following the properties, even if blindly, like a mechanical tool, we gradually come to know more and more and more about the life of centers — we appreciate the way that centers interact, we learn to make the life of one center more intense, by adding, or providing other centers — and the property thus teaches us, concretely, more and more about how we can make centers come to life. That is the whole ball game in the end.

Clearly, experience helps with applying the 15 properties — does this mean there is a connection to [[ Perceptual Exposure]] and/or [[Recognition primed decision ]]?