Thinking with External Representations¶
Kirsh, D. (2010). Thinking with External Representations. AI & Society, 25(4), 441-454.
Cited by¶
1 citation across 1 artifact.
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Primes¶
- Epistemic Action
- In software engineering printing variables, running a REPL, drawing the call graph, or rebasing to linearise history reduces future-reasoning load without changing behaviour.
This sourceExplains how people create and manipulate external representations to change the cost structure of inference and offload working memory — supporting epistemic actions such as printing variables, drawing call graphs, running a REPL, and re-orienting/windowing displays to make the next reasoning step cheaper.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Kirsh backs the general idea that external interaction cuts the cost of reasoning, but gives no software-engineering examples such as REPLs, call graphs or rebasing.
“A useful approach to understand epistemic interaction is to see it as a means of reducing the cost of projecting structure onto the world.”
- In software engineering printing variables, running a REPL, drawing the call graph, or rebasing to linearise history reduces future-reasoning load without changing behaviour.
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Registry ID ref:f31339b7b256 · see in the full table