Edward de Bono made several valuable contributions to the knowledge of human thought processes. Two inherent limitations of the data processing (thinking) in humans, is the sequence or step method used and the self organizing storage of mental data by the brain system.
There are two aspects of this inherent limitation in the handling of information by a self organizing memory surface. The first aspect is the necessity to preceed by steps which can only reflect experience, which may be first or secondhand.
Abstractions or combinations of separate experiences are possible, but they remain experience dominated. The collection of new information is also experience dominated since new information is only selected if it fits in with existing patterns -- relevance is all important...... Arrogance in thinking does prevent the emergence of new ideas, to paraphrase de Bono.
The third basic principle of lateral thinking is the realization that vertical thinking by its very nature is not only ineffective in generating new ideas, but also positively inhabiting. There is an extreme type of temperament which compulsively seeks for tight control of what goes on in the mind; everything has to be logically analyzed and synthesized. ...This is an extreme type of mind, but there are a great number of minds which show this inclination to lesser degrees.
Dr. James L. Adams, Director of the Design Division of the Stanford School of Engineering, teaches thinking as opposed to reacting. Cultural blocks are acquired by exposure to a given set of cultural patterns.
...Some examples of cultural blocks are:
Returning to the work of de Bono on why human thinking "locks up" in most people, let us look at dominant ideas and crucial factors.
Everyone is confidant that they know what they are talking about, reading about or writing about but if you ask them to pick out the dominant idea, there is difficulty in doing so. It is difficult to convert a vague awareness into a definite statement.
Unless one can pick out the dominant idea, one is going to be dominated by it. The dominate idea resides not in the situation itself but in the way it is looked at. A crucial factor is some element of the situation which must always be included no matter how one looks at the situation. Like a dominate idea, a crucial factor can immobilize a situation and make it impossible to shift a point of view. This leads into the area of concepts, divisions, and polarizations as covered by de Bono.
A limited and coherent attention span arises directly from the mechanics of the self maximizing memory surface that is mind. This limited attention span means that one only reacts to a bit of the total environment. Separation into units, selection of units, and combination of units in different ways together, provide a very powerful information processing system. When a unit is obtained by dividing up the total situation or by putting together other units, it establishes it as a pattern in its own right instead of just being part of another pattern. The named assemblies of units (which are called concepts) are even more restricting because they impose a rigid way of looking at a situation. The dangers of the polarizing tendency may now be summarized: Once established, the categories become permanent. New information is altered so that it fits an established category. Once it has done so, there is no indication that it is any different from anything else under that category. The fewer the categories the greater the degree of shift.
Oakley worked out the theory of man's thought evolution and development based on a generic meaning of Man the Tool Maker. His balance point was between tradition and invention in social groupings.
Human culture in all its diversity is the outcome of this capacity for conceptual thinking, but the leading factors in its development are tradition coupled with invention. Imagination, observation, deduction, and speculation ultimately led to art, science and religion, but at first these were scarcely separable from each other.
Immanuel Velikovsky wrote the most controversial book of this century -- Worlds in Collision. His comments on thinking and reality vs. "law" is interesting. If, occasionally, historical evidence does not square with formulated laws, it should be remembered that a law is but a deduction from experience and experiment, and therefore laws must conform with historical facts, not facts with laws.
And finally, let us look at the reception of anything that is new, controversial or different in general terms.
N.I.H...is a technological slang acronym for Not Invented Here. The very existence of such a phrase in the jargon of technology attests to its ubiquity. The NIH reaction is as common as the gravel of the road and strikes all men with equal force.
This data on thinking is the whole subject of these topic papers on thought systems of various types. But of primary importance is to be able to think about the information and processes of thinking itself.
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