When learning science, focusing on the 'verbs' (processes) rather than the 'nouns' (terminology) is more effective for understanding mechanisms and utility.

“But the real magic in understanding biology and being able to internalize it, is understanding things in their verb states, right? Understanding how neurons work, not just as a description, but being able to think about that and visualize it.”

“the way I think about this is rather than thinking in nouns, think in verbs. >> And I think as biologists when we teach biology, you have to teach some nouns, some names of things. But if you can get people to understand the verbs, as concepts, >> it's worth a a gazillion nouns. >> And so I think um people thinking about themselves as a verb state >> of as energy transformation being, it sounds so mystical, but it's not mystical. It's biochemical.”

“most of the time when you're paying attention to science forget the nouns focus on the verbs right you want to understand how the brain wires up maybe a discussion that we can have next time or axon regeneration forget that it's an axon just kind of understand and axon is like a wire okay that helps you visualize it but I can put in your head the ideas of a number of different processes that are involved from going to from sperm meets egg to a baby and a brain why because it's a bunch of processes that when you understand one of them you can more easily understand the next and the next taxonomy doesn't do that”