If all you have is a hammer, then you should be hammering on quite a few things that aren’t nails. Heck, I’ve fixed a propane regulator by whacking it with a hammer. It’s just that you should also.. you know.. buy some more tools.
If you’re aware of the non-nailness of the thing in question, I don’t see any problem with trying out your new tool on it—how else are you to learn its limits!? Using standard tools in a domain where it’s not normally applied is often a source of fresh insight.
This is a really cool point. There’s a relevant quote about how mathematicians use this technique:
Every supposed genius has a bag of tricks—a list of obscure technical methods that hardly anyone knows about, that they have mastered. Every time they hear about a problem, they go through the list mentally, to see if one of the tricks might work. They hardly ever do, but once every year or two, you get a match, and then you look brilliant, like you’ve had some staggering insight. But actually all you did was notice that percolation theory is applicable, or something.
If all you have is a hammer, then you should be hammering on quite a few things that aren’t nails. Heck, I’ve fixed a propane regulator by whacking it with a hammer. It’s just that you should also.. you know.. buy some more tools.
If you’re aware of the non-nailness of the thing in question, I don’t see any problem with trying out your new tool on it—how else are you to learn its limits!? Using standard tools in a domain where it’s not normally applied is often a source of fresh insight.
This is a really cool point. There’s a relevant quote about how mathematicians use this technique:
It’s from here