This reminds me of a prevalent attitude I encountered in college where it was assumed that disciplines required more intelligence as they got more abstract. It's a persistent and seductive intuition that this is the case, but as Asimov points out it is only a matter of convention. Some geniuses can be very bad at dealing with mathematical abstractions and very good at performing in a specialized domain. Gifted athletes come to mind.
Wittgenstein puts it this way:
I can play with the chessmen according to certain rules. But I can also invent a game in which I play with the rules themselves. The pieces in my game are now the rules of chess, and the rules of the game are, say, the laws of logic. In that case I have yet another game and not a metagame.
Wittgenstein puts it this way:
I can play with the chessmen according to certain rules. But I can also invent a game in which I play with the rules themselves. The pieces in my game are now the rules of chess, and the rules of the game are, say, the laws of logic. In that case I have yet another game and not a metagame.