Mankind has failed to learn how to think. Plato, Socrates and Aristotle came up with our current thought software 2,400 years ago.
We have excelled with mathematics but have done nothing with our ordinary thinking for 2,400 years.
Our achievements in science and technology mean that we are proud and complacent about the rectitude of our thinking. So we have made very little progress in human affairs.
The thought model we use most of the time is to analyse a situation, identify a standard element, then come up with a standard answer.
When Greek thinking came into Europe, at the time of the Renaissance (through the Arabs in Spain), the universities and schools were run by the church. They had no use for perceptual thought because the starting points were not matters of human perception but fixed dogmas. There was no use for creative thinking in religion and they did not need design thinking.
We have excelled with mathematics but have done nothing with our ordinary thinking for 2,400 years.
Our achievements in science and technology mean that we are proud and complacent about the rectitude of our thinking. So we have made very little progress in human affairs.
The thought model we use most of the time is to analyse a situation, identify a standard element, then come up with a standard answer.
When Greek thinking came into Europe, at the time of the Renaissance (through the Arabs in Spain), the universities and schools were run by the church. They had no use for perceptual thought because the starting points were not matters of human perception but fixed dogmas. There was no use for creative thinking in religion and they did not need design thinking.
You can analyse the past but the future has to be designed What they did need, however, was thinking that was concerned with truth, logic and argument. They needed this to prove heretics wrong. Therefore this kind of thinking became the standard software for Western thinking.
You can analyse the past but the future has to be designed. While there are people who do provide the 'design' element in society, design has never become as important or as central as analysis. Design is a matter of combining known ingredients to produce value. In one sense, creativity is always involved in design. There is something new which delivers value. That is the essence of creativity. But the design can be logical at the same time.
For instance, applying current computer technology to home shopping might be a new design, but the combination of the elements may be completely logical. Architecture design is usually perfectly logical despite the overall idea being new. In some ways design is opposed to routine.
Creativity might feature in providing a new objective or overall concept. You might reach the objective in a logical way. Alternatively, the overall concept or objective might be logical, but require some new thinking and creativity to be achieved.
There isn't much point in separating logical and creative approaches. Logic and creativity are both parts of thinking and you need to exercise both. Also, in hindsight, any valuable creative idea will seem logical - that is the nature of asymmetric patterning systems. But because something is logical in hindsight, it doesn't mean that the idea could have been reached by logic to begin with.
There is always some risk with design. If a design is new, you can't be certain that it will work out and deliver the desired value. Judgment and routine behavior is low risk so it is the preferred method of thought.
That's not a problem so long as the importance of design is acknowledged. It is even more important to recognize the situations where design is demanded because the routine approaches have failed.
The basic difference between judgment and design must be recognized, as must the importance of design. Design skill and creativity need to be developed, then the human race can increase the scope and power of its thinking.
These are excerpts from my thinking teacher "Edward De Bono". I trust, thinking should be added as a part of our education. Thinking can be developed as skill.
Creativity might feature in providing a new objective or overall concept. You might reach the objective in a logical way. Alternatively, the overall concept or objective might be logical, but require some new thinking and creativity to be achieved.
There isn't much point in separating logical and creative approaches. Logic and creativity are both parts of thinking and you need to exercise both. Also, in hindsight, any valuable creative idea will seem logical - that is the nature of asymmetric patterning systems. But because something is logical in hindsight, it doesn't mean that the idea could have been reached by logic to begin with.
There is always some risk with design. If a design is new, you can't be certain that it will work out and deliver the desired value. Judgment and routine behavior is low risk so it is the preferred method of thought.
That's not a problem so long as the importance of design is acknowledged. It is even more important to recognize the situations where design is demanded because the routine approaches have failed.
The basic difference between judgment and design must be recognized, as must the importance of design. Design skill and creativity need to be developed, then the human race can increase the scope and power of its thinking.
These are excerpts from my thinking teacher "Edward De Bono". I trust, thinking should be added as a part of our education. Thinking can be developed as skill.
Compiler : Jc Balaji Sundarraman,
JCI Designer, JCI Salem METRO
When the profoundness of education is manifested, that is "Education is Realization", I think there can be a major leap in the thinking pattern of people. Education has to liberate the society from the taboos which confine people from thinking beyond. If education proposes true freedom, then we have already reached the milestone...
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