Science and Engineering Aptitude
Recent research has demonstrated a connection between spatial ability and math and science proficiency at the highest levels. Of particular interest, a recent study in the Lancet (2002) demonstrated that high spatial ability was related to the performance of surgery. Additionally, although this is somewhat speculative, Simon Baron-Cohen has shown the grandfathers and fathers of autistics were more likely to be engineers, and since it is known that autistics have an ability peak in block design, it is possible that an inherited ability for block design performance may be responsible for the increased number of engineers and scientists among the relatives of autistic individuals.
Read more about this topic: Block Design Test
Famous quotes containing the words science and/or engineering:
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“Mining today is an affair of mathematics, of finance, of the latest in engineering skill. Cautious men behind polished desks in San Francisco figure out in advance the amount of metal to a cubic yard, the number of yards washed a day, the cost of each operation. They have no need of grubstakes.”
—Merle Colby, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)