Thinking An Interdisciplinary Approach To Critical Creative Thought Ch 15

The Challenge to Go on Thinking

When Robert Peary, the American explorer, asked his Eskimo guide what he was thinking, the guide replied: “I do not think. I have plenty of meat.”

Thinking does not stop with the end of a book or the end of a course. As long as we live we think, but how we think will be our choice. If we choose, we can probe the reaches of the unfolding universe, we can explore the intricacies of the mind, we can carve our thoughts into written words, and we can speak our thoughts with persuasive force.

We began this book citing some of our brilliant thinking predecessors. We can begin to end it by listening to the blunt challenge of Sartre, and the lofty exaltation of Kant. Sartre tells us: “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself”(1946, Lecture). The choice is ours. By our thinking and by our choices and actions, we will define ourselves. Kant says that the ability to be conscious of ourselves raises us infinitely above all other creatures on earth. Let us earn that adulation! Let us use that ability to think.

Let’s think about our future thinking. How wide will we range? How deep will we plunge? How well will we build?

How wide? Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset says that many things fail to interest us because they don’t find enough surfaces in our mind on which to live. We have to expand our mind so that more themes—more of life—can find a place within.

How wide will we cast our senses to feed our mind? What is the sensual milieu in which we will place ourselves? What are the sights and sounds that we will seek out or reject? What physical weaknesses might distort our sensing, and what personal barriers might warp our perceptions? What strengths will focus and magnify them? And how can we select, increase, clarify, and intensify the myriad streams of sensual data that impact our sensory receptors and settle in our mind?

Think about it

The preceding paragraph asks us to think about the deluge of sensual data that inundates us by chance, by default, and by choice. Spending time in self-reflection, in discussion, and in writing increases our understanding of the sensory world and helps form and solidify the sensing patterns that best nourish our minds. Throughout this chapter, pause after each question and think about the possibilities for enlarging your own thinking.

How far will we let our creativity roam? How hard will we strive to break the lock of habit? How long will we prod the problem and seek the solution? How often will we break the crust of custom and begin the dance of creativity? How much will we trust ourselves to reform and blend old things, ideas, and structures into new inventions, thoughts, and organizations?

With what words will we stock our mind? What books will we read? What movies will we watch? With whom will we talk? How long will we wrestle with our written words? Will we crack our clichés and recast them? Will we search for better metaphors to carry our meaning?

Breadth without depth would leave us shallow. If we had to choose only one of these dimensions, would it be “better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing” (Pascal, 1958, p. 10)? To what extent can we have both?

How deep will we plunge? As we stand on the precipice of our personal barriers and look down, will we recognize our enculturation and ego defenses? Will we listen to our feelings when they inspire us and transcend them when they do not? Will we admit our prejudices and fears? Will we struggle against our biases and reach toward objectivity? Will we admit when we’re wrong? Will we read and research to gain the deep knowledge that we need in certain chosen areas? Will we struggle not to win but to understand and express our best thinking?

Breadth and depth interrelate. Our deep areas make no sense isolated from the broader context of the world. Our depth will be greatly aided by breadth. New ideas for our deep interests will come from the cross-fertilization of our wide interests.

No matter how wide or deep our knowledge, its use will be in our thinking. How well will we build? How will we work to develop effective thinking patterns in our mind? How will we link our ideas together? How tight will we keep our lines of logic? How will we combine our thoughts into newness? How persuasively will we present our thoughts? By effort and by choice we can change old thinking habits and adopt powerful thinking patterns to develop what Montaigne calls a “well-formed intellect.” How will we form that intellect?

* * *

Thinking is not an island separated from the rest of our human nature. It does not exist in isolation from our feelings, intuitions, or dreams. It is only one part of us, yet an essential part in all of us. From poet and artist to mathematician and philosopher, from musician and designer to scientist and engineer, better thinking will tend toward a better life.

The human species has used its thinking marvelously, but it still knows very little about so very much, asking today many of the same questions that were asked by minds thousands of years ago. Great thinking can unlock many doors, but there may be some that it cannot open. Yet how wondrous is the thinker; in the words of Shakespeare, “How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! . . . in apprehension how like a god!”

Thinking. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Critical and Creative Thought, Fourth Edition
Chapter 15: The Challenge to Go on Thinking
ISBN: 9780132209748 Authors: Gary R. Kirby , Jeffery R. Goodpaster
Copyright © Pearson Education (2007)