Intuition has the endorsement of many heavyweights. Pioneering psychologist Carl Jung called it one of the four ways people function, along with feeling, thinking and sensing. Psychologist Marcia Emery, author of three books on intuition, calls it "the deepest wisdom of the human soul."

But many urge caution. "Intuition makes people feel more powerful, more effective," says Stuart Vyse, a psychologist at Connecticut College in New London, Conn. "But it has been shown over and over again that gut reactions are not accurate. It is a mistake to base a decision on a gut feeling."

Myers says he and other researchers are not trying to destroy intuition. He applauds its "unbidden insights and inspirations." He aims instead, he says "to fortify our intuition, to sharpen our thinking and to deepen our wisdom."

                                              Intuition "Scientists, writers and artists have all marveled at the outcroppings of their unconscious, intuitive minds. In times of relaxation, creative insights and impulses often appear like Web site pop-up ads."



Excerpt from-Human Intuition: The Brain Behind the Scenes

Intuition: Its Powers and Perils


















David Myers (academic)

David Guy Myers (born 20 September 1942) is a professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan, United States,[1] and the author of 17 books, including popular textbooks entitled Psychology, Exploring Psychology, Social Psychology and general-audience books dealing with issues related to Christian faith as well as scientific psychology. In addition, he has published chapters in over 60 books and numerous scholarly research articles in professional journals. Myers is widely recognized for his research on happiness and is one of the supporters of the positive psychological movement.[2]

excerpt from: Intuitionschool.org


In his most recent book, Todd Rose explores the concept that ‘individuality matters’. He asserts that in order to thrive both on a personal and professional level it is vital to reject the ‘tyranny of the average’ and focus on a person’s ‘individuality’. 

As a graduate lecturer at the Harvard School of Education, Rose cares about implementing the principles of individuality that are welcomed in recent medical and scientific research to a persons daily life. It is not uncommon to judge ourselves and others according to how closely we come to an ingrained system of yardstick averages. A parent may worry that there is something wrong their daughter/son because she/he is ‘below average’. In his book, Rose sets about proving that there is no such thing as average intelligence or for that matter an average body size, average talent or average character.

A compelling example is the life-or-death mystery that the US Air Force had on its hands in the late 1940s. During the dawn of jet-powered aviation a recurring problem surfaced: pilots could not keep control of their planes. Military engineers confirmed that the issue was ‘pilot error’ since they could find no mechanical or electronic defects in the planes. This baffled the pilots who knew for sure that their skills were not the cause. Eventually attention was turned to the design of the cockpit itself, which had continued to be built in accordance to a set of averages derived from the physical dimensions of hundreds of male pilots in 1926. Military engineers began to wonder if the pilots had grown bigger since 1926. An enormous investigation was reinstated, measuring and averaging thousands of pilots on 140 dimensions including thumb length, crotch height and the distance from a pilot’s eye to his ear.

A young researcher, Gilbert S. Daniels, was hired straight out of college to help with the measuring of pilots’ limbs. Daniels found facilitating this ‘averages approach’ highly UN-useful. As an undergraduate he had written his thesis on the comparison of the shape of 250 male Harvard students’ hands. He found that once he had averaged all his data, the average hand did not resemble any individual’s measurements and there was NO SUCH THING as an average hand size.

Harbouring a private conviction about the futility of averages that rejected almost a century of military design, Daniels decided to find out how many pilots really were average. He calculated the average range of ten dimensions he believed to be the most relevant for cockpit design and then compared each individual pilot, one by one, to this ‘average’ pilot. The general consensus was that the vast majority of pilots would be within the average range on most dimensions. The results were stunning. Not ONE out of 4,063 pilots fit within the average range on all ten dimensions. Therefore, if you’ve designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you’ve actually designed it to fit no one at all!