About a year ago, there was a topic (Real-world implications of the TBT?) that touched on some vaguely related topics. For example, I posted:
… I’d strongly recommend watching Bret Victor’s tour de force presentation, Media for Thinking the Unthinkable. His companion essay, An Ill-Advised Personal Note about “Media for Thinking the Unthinkable”, is also worth reading…
In the video presentation (made a dozen years ago at the MIT Media Lab), Bret talks about how Watson and Crick used manipulative thinking to discover the structure of DNA.