Less Charted Waters

water rushing from a kitchen cabinet. At the beginning of the winter season, he had failed to shut off a pipe that ran to the garden faucet. Consequently, when cold weather came, the pipe froze and created the spouting cabinet. With some presence of mind, he ran to the control valve and turned it counterclockwise as far as it would go. Rather than staunching the flow, this action exacerbated the problem. Now the water fairly spurted from the cabinet. In the face of such empirical evidence, it should have been child's play for him to figure out that he should turn the valve the other direction. But, as a product of a didactic educational process, he could not bring himself to do what the situation called for-to turn the pipe in the other direction. His conceptual knowledge assured him that valves turn on clockwise and off counterclock-