What is wrong with “Theory of Flight,” from the pilot’s point of view, is not that it is theory. What’s wrong is that it is the theory of the wrong thing – it usually becomes the theory of building the airplane rather than of flying it. It goes deeply – much too deeply for a pilot’s needs – into problems of aerodynamics; it even gives the pilot a formula by which to calculate his lift! But it neglects those phases of flight that interest the pilot most. It often fails to show the pilot the most important fact of the art of piloting – the Angle of Attack, and how it changes in flight. And it usually fails to give him a clear understanding of the various flight conditions in which an airplane can proceed, from fast flight to mush and stall. This whole book, and especially its first chapters, are an attempt to refocus “Theory of Flight,” away from things that the pilot does not need to know about, and upon the things that actually puzzle him when he flies.
The synthesis here is roughly: Practical experience in a sort of Giant Lookup Table fashion but has bugs and fails in certain situations. Theory may have limits, but its main flaw is that it includes many useless things. To help those with practical experience, you need an awareness of theory and an awareness of the bugs in practical experience.
Anecdotal evidence: Most of driving, I learned through practice and instruction. I learned to brake smoothly only after my dad told me the underlying physics.
Thinking it over, it’s also a matter of extrapolation. From practice, you can effectively fit a curve to the behavior, but you don’t learn what happens outside the domain where that curve fits—and so, when you stall the wing or lose grip on the rear tires, your reactions will be exactly wrong, because you’re playing by rules that don’t apply any more. And yes, you can learn to fit the point of switchover and learn to fit the behavior in the new regime, in time … but if you crash, first, it will be very expensive.
Next paragraph in the book:
The synthesis here is roughly: Practical experience in a sort of Giant Lookup Table fashion but has bugs and fails in certain situations. Theory may have limits, but its main flaw is that it includes many useless things. To help those with practical experience, you need an awareness of theory and an awareness of the bugs in practical experience.
Anecdotal evidence: Most of driving, I learned through practice and instruction. I learned to brake smoothly only after my dad told me the underlying physics.
Thinking it over, it’s also a matter of extrapolation. From practice, you can effectively fit a curve to the behavior, but you don’t learn what happens outside the domain where that curve fits—and so, when you stall the wing or lose grip on the rear tires, your reactions will be exactly wrong, because you’re playing by rules that don’t apply any more. And yes, you can learn to fit the point of switchover and learn to fit the behavior in the new regime, in time … but if you crash, first, it will be very expensive.
Agreed, both are advantages of theory.