You can play 20 questions with nature and win: Categorical versus coordinate spatial relations as a case study

Alan Newell famously asserted that “You can’t play 20 questions with nature and win” (Newell, A. (1973). You can’t play 20 questions with nature and win. In W.G. Chase (Ed.), Visual information processing. New York: Academic Press.), and specifically focused on the futility of studying binary distinctions. However, the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial relations representations has turned out to be fruitful. In this brief article, the categorical/coordinate distinction is treated as a case study, as a way to address a more general point, namely how to play 20 questions with nature and win. The key to studying binary distinctions may lie in the ways this one differs from previous ones. First, from the outset this distinction was cast within the context of a theory of a more general processing system; second, it was formulated from the perspective of multiple levels of analysis within a processing system, and thereby bridges characteristics of information processing with characteristics of the brain.