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Thinking

Kirby, G., & Goodpaster, J. (2007). Thinking (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

THINKING FOURTH EDITION

GARY R. KIRBY EFFERY R. GOODPASTER

LANGUAGE: OUR THINKING MEDIUM

The limits of m.!f langua3e are the limits of m.!f life. - LVDW IG WITIGENSTEIN

Language can articulate like an orator or bark like a dog. Language can cut with the ethereal edge of utterance or sweep like a broom in the gutter. It can ring in the courtroom, the boardroom, the class- room, and the bar. It can hold much of our life wrapped in its words.

We think with words. As we read this, we are using language to think. We have defined thinking broadly as the activity of the brain that can po- tentially be communicated. Although we may think in other ways besides language, such as with images or feelings, language plays a central role in our thinking.

Our main focus in this chapter is to understand language so that we can think better. Instead oflinguistic terms such as semantics, syntax, and pragmatics, we have used common words such as meaning, word order, and context. In this chapter we examine how language enables, structures, and limits our thinking; we notice the formative influence of society on language; we examine the fun- damental, metaphorical nature oflanguage, and we learn how to make metaphors; we point out the limitations oflanguage; then we look more specifically at the rich legacy of English, at its word stock, at its capabilities of definitions, connotations,

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Language and Our Mind 91

and word order; we highlight the importance of context and clarity; and finally, we look at some pitfalls to avoid such as vague generalizations, wordiness, illog- icalness, redundancies, and cliches.

Language and Thinkin·g

In his Tractatus, Wittgenstein presented a dualistic theory of thought and language: Thought is internal and language external. In his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein closed the gap between think- ing and language. He said that thought cannot exist without language, that as one learns language, one learns how to think, that thought and language are one.

1. Do you think that your thinking is internal and that language is merely the external expression of it?

2. Think about the accuracy of Wittgenstein's claim for the importance of language, that thought and language are one. Can you think of ways to support or refute this claim?

3. Can you do any thinking without language? 4. If you believe you can th in k without language, please do some "lan-

guageless" thinking now. 5. Next, if you were able to think without language, try to communicate

that "languageless thinking" to someone else, again without using language.

6. What did you discover?

As you were thinking about the role of language, as you were reading these words, and as you were discussing them, you were using language. That use strongly supports a major portion of Wittgenstein's position that language is thinking. Regardless of his or your exad positions, the funda- mental connection of language to thinking shows the enormous impor- tance of language.

The cerebral cortex is like a furrowed field waiting for the seeds of language. With the help of functional MRI and PET scans, and researchers like Antonio and Hanna Damasio, we are beginning to find out where in the furrows the seeds grow into sounds, verbs, nouns, and sentences. Until recently it was assumed

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that most language processes, such as "naming centers" were located only in the frontal and temporal lobes of the neocortex. But new research using functional MRI is showing that an older part of the brain involved in motor control, the cerebellum, is also involved in linguistic functions (Jansen et al., 2005). This planting analogy straddles the debate about whether language is innate (Plato, Chomsky) or learned. It is both. Clearly the brain has language capability from birth. Infants spontaneously babble, making many sounds not found in their culture, and then at about ten months they begin to match their sounds to their language environment. In short, the brain is prepared to receive any language, but that language must be learned.

Language is the "software" that allows our brain to think the way it does; without language the cerebral cortex lies largely unused. A brain without lan- guage is like that field without seed or a car without gas-all potential and no performance. If you know the story of Helen Keller, you know that when she was young her brain was brilliant but empty of language, and that she acted like an animal. She was deaf and blind; but when the light of language, sensed through the touch of fingers, turned on her mind, she began a learning rush that led to fluency in seven languages. Without language we too might act like animals.

Our thinking is confined within the language that is "running" in our brain. Language is the interpretative medium for the input-the remembering, sorting, creating, judging, and deciding-and language also dramatically shapes those processes. Without language our cerebral cortex, able to conceptualize the universe, would drape uselessly around our lower brain like clothes on a mannequin.

The Universalizing Power of Language

Part of the enormous power of language is its universalizing nature. We have the word tree in our head and we, in a general way, know what all trees are like. Although their tips might flaunt buds, blossoms, cones, seeds, nuts, fruit, nee- dles, or leaves, we know that they all have roots, trunk, and branches. In a single word tree, we contain all the trees on earth. Often we form this type of universal concept from a single instance. For example, if you saw only one golden tamarin (a fluffy, quick, tiny, eight-inch-long monkey with golden iridescent fur), you would recognize the next one. And even if that next one was a red-mantled tamarin you would easily recognize it; from the single tamarin you would have abstracted universal qualities of "tamarin."

Perhaps some languages have fewer universals. According to Louis Uriarte, a Jesuit missionary who spent several years with an Omagua tribe on the upper reaches of the Amazon River, those natives almost always speak in limiting specifics such as "that panther whose paw print we saw by the river." Omagua

Language and Our Mind 93

parents cannot universalize a warning to their children to "watch out for pan- thers," but must warn to "watch out for the panther we heard growling by the big rock." We do not know whether the Omaguas have any concepts for all existence, but in our language we have the word universe. We can figuratively hold the universe in our head! Thus we can ask those fundamentally probing questions of origins and ends.

The Structuring Power of Language

If language is the software of our mind, we can expect it to channel our think- ing, but surprisingly language can even channel our perceptions. This means that we see things differently because of our language. This concept of linguistic relativity, often called the Whorf hypothesis after Benjamin Lee Whorf, was popular in the 1950s, was attacked in the 1960s, and returned in a more gener- alized form in the 1990s. Whorf thought that Inuits (Eskimos) would perceive snow differently because of their many words for snow. Since Eskimos have the same rods, cones, and retinas that we have, do their words for snow enable them ro perceive differently? We asked a parallel question of a downhill skier and for- mer captain of a ski team, who uses words like base, fresh, artificial, powder, champagne, corn, granular, slush, Sierra cement, firn, packed powder, hard packed, wind-packed, crust, glare ice, blue ice, bullet proof, and boilerplate. Does having these words in his brain help him to recognize more kinds of snow and to ski better? Yes, and more safely too: "If you are moving fast and pop out of the trees you'd better be able to recognize wind-packed or you could get hurt." Richard Nisbett in his Geography ofThought (2003) thinks Asians see context and connection while Westerners see object and category. His reviewer states: "Through a large number of social psychological experiments, the author demonstrates that Asians actually see, think about, and mentally organize the world in fundamentally different ways than westerners" (Ernst, 2004). For ex- ample, after looking at an aquarium for forty seconds, Americans would make three times the comments about the larger or brighter fish while the Japanese would make 60 percent more comments about the background of the aquarium. (Ernst, 2004).

Equally important, when you describe a pain to your doctor, the doctor's perceptions are also structured by language. For instance, if you were having a heart attack and you described the pain as "sharp" you would be less likely to be properly diagnosed than if you had described it as "pressure," "tightness," or "radiating."

Let's look at a few other examples. A first-time car owner who has never worked on cars opens the hood and sees a jungle of wires, metal, and hoses. What do mechanics, with all the words for these parts in their heads, see? An

94 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

average person listens to a ninety-five piece orchestra and hears a blend of sounds. \Vhat does a skilled musician hear? An inner city resident enters the for- est for the first time and sees "dark," "big," and "scary." What does the park nat- uralist see? Much of the differences in perception is the difference in the experiences that are stored in language.

One last example. As a Saturday morning chore, a boy had to dust a maze of !edged baseboards and door frames in his family's old house. In college he learned those ledges were modeled on the seven parts of the Greek column. Today he no longer sees a maze but he can see each of those ledges from the stybolate on the bottom to the cornice on top because he has a word for each part.

We see what we see partly because of the language that we learn. Mon- taigne, the sixteenth-century philosopher, tells us that "the mind cuts [reality] to its own conceptions" (1967, p. 131); therefore, he warns us to be very sus- picious of whatever the mind seizes upon or rejects. Bacon calls this distorting process "the idols of the mind." He calls our particular idols "the idol of the cave." Each individual "has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature" (p. 336); each of us is unique in mind, body, education, and habit (p. 337); and if we idolize something we usually distort its importance (p. 340). What kind of mind, filled with what kind oflanguage, do you have?

A Brief Mind Sketch

In the chart below list a few areas of interest to you, such as your hobbies. To the right of those areas of interest write a few technical terms that enable you to see particular parts of that hobby. For instance, if you like to work on cars you might write "camshaft," "rocker arms," and so forth. Continue filling in the chart.

Areas I Like Terms That Structure Perception

(continued)

Language and Society 95

Areas I Do Not Like

Areas I Know Little About

If we heed Bacon and Montaigne, our lists of li kes and dislikes will alert us to some of our stronger perceptual biases. We probably found the last section the hardest to fil l in; if we didn't know much about the area, how could we write down the terms? Thus the importance of the last list becomes clear: we need the terms, the language in our mind if we wish to know, to grow, to become successfu l in school and work (and, we might add, in life). Better language will not make us better people, but it will of- fe r us a better chance to understand more, to think more effectively, and give and get more from life.

Language reflects society and is a vehicle for its values. It is only as good as the best minds that have shaped it, and it is only useful to us if we assimilate it. The English language reflects a rich and varied society and offers us an astonishing array of choices, as we shall see below. It also, at times, shackles our thinking.

In the 1940s George Orwell, in his famous article "Politics and the English Language," declared that the decline of England was reflected in the sloppiness of the English language. Few professionals have sought to corroborate Orwell's connection between language and values. However, if we take a look at the use of words by the U.S. government, the Orwellian observation gains credibility. In the 1970s government reports referred to civilian deaths in Vietnam as "col- lateral damage." Sounds bloodless, like the "collateral" we might put up to se- cure a loan. And "pacification" was the term used to make the country "peaceful" by such tactics as laying down a "carpet" of bombs from B-52s. Within such a

96 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

peaceful bombing pattern, who could be offended by a little collateral damage? If those twisted terms do not make us flinch, consider the defense of one of those involved in the Watergate cover-up, who said, "Truth comes protected with a cloud of lies." George Orwell condemned this type of political language as "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

The way we think about these events is no doubt influenced by the lan- guage we use to describe them. In the 1980s information was given to the president in such a deviously crafted manner that the president was able to re- spond to the questions about the Iran Contra scandal with "plausible denia- bility." With such a prepared excuse for a president to lie, are we surprised that the "Clean Air Working Group" was a lobby by air-polluting companies to de- feat the clean air bill? By comparison, businesses were quite truthful when they said they were "downsizing," instead of firing people, although before long companies did not even like the negative connotation of"down," so they began "rightsizing."

In the 1990s, the Gulf War presented us with the powerful metaphors of "desert shield" and "desert storm." "Desert sword" was one of the original metaphors considered, but it was rejected because it was too harsh and warlike: the bloody sword was softened into the desert storm. In the Yugoslavian war the Serbians killing Croatians called the acts "ethnic cleansing." During a presi- dential campaign, a candidate was called an "ignoramus and emotionally un- stable" until he dropped from the race; then the same people who had called him an "ignoramus" called him "courageous and wise" in order to draw his votes.

Into the second millenium the euphemisms continue. A childless couple be- comes "child free." An F (failing) grade is softened into an NP (no pass) or NG (no grade), and those who are failing are called "emerging students." Adults hav- ing sex with children, formerly "pedophiles," are referred to as participating in "intergenerational intimacy." A gas station attendant is a "petroleum transfer en- gineer." "Transsexual surgery" is replaced by "gender reassignment." Frogmen learning how to kill other frogmen are enrolled in a "swimmer nullification pro- gram." "I misspoke," became common for "I lied." And finally, the policy of seizing individuals and taking them to countries known to practice torture has been called "extraordinary rendition."

Such distortions were not always a part of our American culture. Building on Christian values and Roman law, people thought of the ideal American as forthright and almost rudely honest. We can hear honesty honored in cultural phrases such as "George Washington never told a lie," "he's a man of his word," "you have my word on it," and "I give you my word." Such honesty engenders

The Metaphorical Power of language 97

trust and furthers communication. When language is used to lie, it rips the fab- ric of trust and becomes a weapon of war.

"Which way I fly is Hell; myself am hell;" says Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost (IV, 75). We can feel the power in that thought; it comes from the metaphor that joins the concepts of"myself" and "hell." The metaphor functions at the heart of language. If we can understand metaphors and learn to think with them, we will tap into a richer vein of language and thought. In this section we define metaphor in a broad sense. We show how language works metaphorically and how it grew metaphorically, how root metaphors control fields of knowledge, and how, when the metaphor changes, understanding changes.

What Is a Metaphor?

A standard definition of metaphor is simply "an implied comparison between two things." Metaphor comes from two Greek words: Meta means "with," " f " "b d " d h . " " s h . a ter, or eyon , an p orem means to carry. o a metap or carnes an- other meaning with the original or carries the original meanings beyond into a new meaning. This blending of old meanings produces the new. If the lit- erary critics will forgive us, we are going to use metaphor in the broadest sense of comparison, which includes similes (explicit comparisons) as well as analogies (extended comparisons). This great reach of the metaphor may be why Aristotle called it the fundamental figure of speech and its use the true mark of genius.

Like the metaphor, language merges two things: sounds (letters or signs) and the reality the sounds signify. In this blending of sounds and reality, language it- self is metaphorical. Also, in its deep roots, language seems to have grown metaphorically; for instance, the phrase "I am" quite possibly came from an ear- lier Indo-European form that meant "I breathe." This metaphorical growth ex- pands the meaning of many common words, such as run (run up a bill, run the show). When the metaphor of "the information highway" struck at the end of the millennium, within weeks the highway accessories appeared: digital off- ramps, information tollbooths, bumper-to-bumper traffic, electronic routes, and even potholes. Because metaphors are centrally connected with the way lan- guage works, and because language is connected to the way we think, metaphors are intricately connected to our thinking.

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EVOLUTION OF lANGUAGES AND THE EFFECT ON METAPHORS

According to Otto Jespersen, the evolution of language has been positive because modern words have become better adapted to express abstract things and to render specific things with definite precision . "The old words, on the contrary, spoke more immediately to the senses, they were manifestly more suggestive, more graphic and pictorial. " They were, in effect, "the language of poetry" (Jespersen, 2004, p. 320). For example, an arborist might see a tree with "excurrent or deliquescent" bra nchi ng. However, our ancestors might have seen a tree with its legs, arms (l imbs) and fingers. For what contexts are those old and new terms appl icab le? What is the value of each? Which holds immediate metaphorica l power? If you look up the meanings of "excurrent and deliquescent, " pe rhaps you can discover the distant metaphors that lie in their meaning.

Metaphorical Models Control Thinking

Metaphors are the way we think about ourselves and the world. All fields ofknowl~ edge have root metaphors, or models, which began the fields; when those metaphors change, the field changes. For instance, we can watch our understanding of the world change from the Ptolemaic loops around the earth, to the Copernican circles around the sun, to the Keplerian ellipses, to the Newtonian lines of force, to the Einsteinian merger of energy and matter, to Rutherford and Bohr's solar system of the atom, to the current model ofleptons and quarks, "strange," "charmed," and otherwise. As each new metaphor was created, the entire field of knowledge shifted to the new model, and our way of thinking about the universe changed.

To understand the metaphorical nature of those models, let us look at a master metaphor, perhaps the greatest in scientific or literary history, E = mc2. Einstein's insight is basically metaphorical, bringing two things together, but he has gone further and brought them together into an actual identity: Mass and energy are the same, are interchangeable.

In genetics, Watson and Crick saw the DNA molecule as a winding staircase (the double helix) with four kinds of repeating steps. Once they achieved this ba- sic metaphorical insight, they set the path for the genome project that mapped all the human genes. The double helix model has dominated-almost controlled- all genetic thinking. We understand much about the universe and about our bodies because of the metaphorical models that are in place.

These metaphors also determine the way we think about ourselves. For in- stance, in medicine, an herb (medica) is prescribed by an M.D. (medicus doctor); in- fluenced by this metaphor, some doctors willingly give us medicine to comfort our

The Metaphorical Power of Language 99

"dis-ease" (another metaphor). To understand how this metaphor controls ways of thinking, consider the difference in going to an internist or a surgeon with the same problem. If we go to a doctor of internal medicine for a heart problem, we may be more likely to receive stress- and cholesterol-reducing drugs; if we go to a heart sur- geon (the root meaning of surgeon is someone who works with the hands), we are more likely to receive a bypass operation. As the metaphor changes, the duties change correspondingly: A "nurse," formerly a breast-feeding "wet-nurse," becomes a "physician's assistant" with more duties and the greater prestige associated with "physician." As the metaphors change, so does our understanding of the universe.

So too we could unfold the metaphorical bases for baseball and business, for philosophy and religion, for working, and for loving. We understand these realms of activity, again, because the metaphors for them have been articulated. However, one key metaphor is missing-the one for the brain. The brain and its operations have been metaphorically referred to as a tabula rasa, a black box, a lightbulb, a garden, an enchanted loom, memory groves, memory banks, a machine, a camera, a switchboard, the master organ, a library, a computer, and a hologram. Currently a stunning metaphor has arisen, that of comparing the brain to a metaphor! Since the brain produces metaphors, blends different ideas and images into new forms, one way to understand the brain is to say it works like a metaphor. Although we are partial to this latter metaphor since it illus- trates the centrality of the metaphor in thinking, it is probably not yet the mas- ter metaphor that will unlock the secret of the brain.

We have seen some enormous claims made for the metaphor, which are pushed even further by literary critic Caroline Spurgeon ( 1966) who says that the metaphor

holds within itself the very secret of the universe. The bare fact that germinat- ing seeds or falling leaves are actually another expression of the processes we see at work in human life and death, thrills me, as it must others, with a sense of being here in the presence of a great mystery, which, could we only understand it, would explain life and death itsel£ (p. 6)

In a national trial the prom inent lawyers on both sides used metaphors for truth to persuade the jury: "The embers of truth wi ll glow the more you blow on them," and "it is a house of cards, and the finger of truth comes by and pushes it over." In that context of truth, it is fitting that when one of the lawyers was told by the judge to quit dragging out proceedings, the lawyer responded with a metaphorical slip: "We are moving forward, your honor,

(continued)

100 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

lANGUAGE, LAWYERS, AND LAWMAKERS (Conii~~ ·,:·,.· .:-~-: ·:,!. .,,._

like a shark through the water." When laughter dotted the courtroom, the attorney quickly changed his metaphor to "like a dolphin, your honor."

A senator from a midwestern state jotted down these ineloquent sayings from his colleagues:

These numbers are not my own; they are from someone who knows what he's talking about.

I'm not confused on that. It's just that I'm too busy to think. 1 don't necessarily believe what I think. My knowledge is no match for his ignorance. That land in the north has been untouched by nature. This bill will help sparsely populated large cities. As long as I'm a senator, there won't be any nuclear suppositories in

my state. I have survived a terminal heart attack. I know that what I believe is different from what I know are the facts. People planning on getting in serious accidents should have their seat

belts on.

The structuring, universalizing, and metaphorical power of language which en- riches our perceptions and understanding can also deaden our perceptions, bend new data into old structures, warp analogies, and distort our memories. To think accurately, we need to be aware of this linguistic twist on thinking. With its uni- versal terms, such as tree, language blinds us from seeing the individual charac- teristics of each tree. Even iflanguage helps us to see more specifically, as in maple tree, or still more specifically, as in silver maple, the words still blind us within that narrowed definition. With words in our head we think we know what all trees look like (or all silver maple trees), yet each tree and each leaf upon it is unique.

Similarly, as new data enter, we try to fit them into existing patterns, sometimes with dangerous results. For example, most of us are familiar with the road sign that warns trucks of a steep hill ahead. The first time a driver of a car saw a similar road sign (of a truck tilted sideways), he perceived it to be the "steep hill" sign that he already knew. Not slowing, he sped into a tire-screeching curve. The sign of a truck tilting over meant "dangerous curve ahead," and he had wrongly interpreted it. Because of the language already in his head, he had failed to notice the subtle difference. Similarly, driving through the eternal wheat fields of Kansas, he saw an

The Power of English 101

unknown checkered pattern in the distance. As he tried to fit it into his urban patterns, it looked to him like an auto junkyard; as he drove closer it turned into a feedlot packed with cattle. Once again his language patterns had distorted his perceptions, this time turning cattle into cars.

Historically, the wrong metaphors have also limited our understanding. As long as people thought that the heart was the center of the affections, they could not understand it. They were imprisoned by the wrong metaphor. Not until Harvey noted blood circulation and Newcomen invented the vacuum pump could they properly describe the action of the heart: it worked like a pump.

Patterns of language may even cause us to remember inaccurately. For exam- ple, a boy who grew up around oak trees, and who could once correctly spell all the states, recently confused the state with the tree and misspelled it "Oaklahoma."

So the paradoxical nature oflanguage both sets our mind free and imprisons it. Language "lights up" our cortex with universal concepts, metaphors, and structure. It also partially imprisons our mind within the boundaries of lan- guage, blinding us to the subtleties of the world around us.

If language imprisons our mind, English is the prison of choice. Our rich mul- ticulturallinguistic legacy and the dominant roles England and America have played in history have expanded English across the globe, made it the dominant language of the Internet, and with the Voyager, English has gone into deep space. Out of several thousand spoken languages, English has become the most impor- tant language on earth, leaving us not so much a prison of the mind but a legacy of more than a million words to think with.

Word Meanings

Although this inheritance is ours, we have to earn it; we are not born with English, we learn it. And considering the importance oflanguage to thinking, to our human interaction, to our understanding of ourselves and the world, and to our ability to reason and make choices that affect our success and happiness, we may wish to learn it better.

What does any word mean? The answer lies somewhere between primitive voodoo power in which the word becomes reality, and the anarchy found in Al ice's Wonderland: "A word means exactly what I choose to make it mean." Ac- tually, a word means what society chooses to make it mean. For instance, when a young boy who worried about being kidnapped received a puppy, he trans- fe rred his personal fears to his linguistic patterns and worried that his little puppy would get "pupnapped." If society accepted that term, if it became com- mon like carjacking, then it would enter the language. Both pupnapped and

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carjacking sprang into being out of standard English patterns. In order to think more effectively, we will look briefly at the expansive patterns of stems and af- fixes, at definitions to achieve clarity, and at connotations to achieve subtlety.

The Language in Our Mind

Below is a series of questions to help you think about the current state of the language in your mind. Since you have seen that your th inking is only as good as your language, this activity may make you aware of a need to strengthen and sharpen your language .

1. How fluent are you? 2. What kind of words are in your mind? How many? You can begin to

answer this question by thinking of the types of books you have read and what kind of words you use when you speak and write.

3. How clearly can you lay out your thoughts? Can others follow you without many questions or clarifications?

4. What is your reading level? What kind of books, if any, do you read? What kind would you like to read more of? Do you need to read more?

5. What are the content strengths of your language base? In other words, in what areas are you knowledgeable and can easily th ink and commu- nicate? What areas do you wish to expand into?

6. What is your metaphorical ability? Can you put ideas together into new combinations?

7. What is your thinking style? Take a moment to reflect on how words and ideas go through your mind: in random order, in tight sequence, singly, in bunches, in images, with feelings, or in any other mode you can identify.

Stems and Affixes

Words in the brain are like money in the bank: The more we have, the richer we are. We need words to think with, and the wealthier our vocabulary, potentially, the richer our thoughts. The quickest way to verbal wealth is to learn about stems and affixes. For instance, if we know the stem cog means "think" (as in Descartes' famous Cogito ergo sum), we can begin to guess at the meanings of cogitate, cogitation, and cogitator. It would be a simple step from there to add a prefix to make precogitate. Word awareness, especially of stems and affixes, can quickly increase our word stock which is our thinking reservoir.

The Power of English 103

The Right Word

An expanded word base should help us in picking the best word; clear thinking depends upon it. Francis Bacon (1625/1965) tells us "ill and unfit words" can obstruct the understanding and "lead men away into numberless empty controversies" (p. 337). Have you ever heard people energetically arguing about different things when they thought they were arguing about the same thing? Not agreeing on the topic and its definition creates a communication problem simi~ lar to the proverbial blind men feeling different parts of the elephant. Defini- tions can be so powerful that often the person who defines the issue decides the debate. For example, if pornography is defined under the banner of free speech, that definition probably wins the debate.

Sometimes users of our language are imprecise. For example, a host of a Chicago talk show said that a "permissive" and a "tolerant" society were the same thing. What do you think about the differences in those words? "Pre- ventive Nutrition" is the title of an article in a medical book. Although we know what it means because some word such as "disease" is implied, normally we do not combine the idea of prevention with a good quality like nutrition. To take a parallel example, how would we respond to the phrase "preventive learning"?

Sometimes the wrong word is used because it sounds close to the word that is sought. Consider a professor in a classroom who said "tubal litigation" instead of"tuballigation." In one case one is tied up by doctors, in the other by lawyers. Another example of a near miss is from an editorial in a prestigious newspaper that said congress "flaunts" the law. Flaunts means to show off; the author meant to say "flouts" the law. Sometimes when we attempt to use a big word, we miss by using another; such malapropisms can be embarrassing.

Sometimes finding the best word is difficult because our language is a sloppy dish to select from: For instance, our tuition might be handled through the billing department, office of financial affairs, bursar's office, treasurer, comp- troller, or just plain business office. Or we are cautioned about movies that have nudity, violence, and language. Language? Do we wish to return to the silent movies without language? Just because our English language is sometimes sloppy and vague does not mean we have to be sloppy in our thinking. If we have a wide selection of tools and some of them are dull, we do not have to use the dull ones. We can select our words and define the issues carefully.

Connotations

Even if we aim our words accurately at their targets, the winds of connotation can blow our meaning off course. Most words are not confined to a single mean- ing; rather, they have many shades of meaning. One technical college called itself

104 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

a "terminal" college; a church counseled its members not to "let worry kill you- let the church help"; and a church bulletin noted that "The United Methodist Women have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the church basement this Friday." A medical complex advertised its laparoscopic operations for hernias and gallbladders as "band-aid surgery." When you hear "band-aid," what do you think and feel? The intended connotation was "an easy surgery" but "band-aid" also carries the connotations of"cheap, temporary, superficial," as in the phrase, "putting a band-aid on the problem."

These examples show the emotionally laden connotations that some words carry. Words have an enormous power to excite our emotions. Words may not be the things themselves, but they can sometimes slap us in the face with the full force of what they signify.

One helpful way to think about the connotations of words is to judge their positive or negative impact. For instance, concerning overweight people, where would you place the following words on the grid below: stout, hippo, plump, fatso, tubby, overweight, fat, pig, cow, lump of lard, butter ball, full-figured, hefty, and obese?

-10 0 neutral +10

u I Ill I u

Identifying Our Flame Words

We all have different "flame words." Some examples are stupid, ugly, liar, cheater, weHare, AIDS, as well as vulgar terms and racial slurs. List some words that trigger your emotions.

Sometimes it may not be the word that inflames us but the tone, which can turn the meaning around 180 degrees.

Change

The Power of English 105

Be not the first by whom the new is tried Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

-ALEXANDER POPE

Connotations change. To keep our thinking sharp we have to stay abreast of these changes. Clearly we do not wish to refer to our car as a carriage, our word processor as a typewriter, a happy man as gay, or the fragrance of a rose as an odor. Even the Bible changes: in 1990, the revised standard version of the King James Bible changed "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" to "What are human beings that you are mindful of them?" (Psalms 8.4). "/rregardless" of the gram- marians, anxious (formerly "worried") can now mean "eager"; aggravate (formerly "make more severe") can mean "irritate"; and intrigue (formerly "connive") can mean "interest." In deciding when to change, the advice by Alexander Pope above is solid: don't be the first or the last. Granted if we have a deep knowledge of lan- guage a "dilapidated shack" will bother us, for "dilapidated" means "stones falling down," and an ad for a mountain bike with an "anatomical seat" will likewise jar our deep sense of language for it means a "cut up seat," but few people will be bothered by the deeper meanings. In general, the new meaning may be adopted more quickly in casual conversation and used more cautiously in formal dis- course, but when the new meaning is used by the majority of educated speakers, it is time for us also to use it. In all usages of changing connotations we need to make a wise decision on when to drop the old and use the new.

THINK ABOUT IT: People used to browse the library, and while some people currently graze the net, most prefer to surf. Think about the changing connotations that are implied in those metaphors. Would you prefer to graze or surf the net? Which activity is funda- mentally deeper? Or would you prefer a different metaphor?

Word Order Creates Meaning

When we think with English, we have to place words carefully because word position contributes to meaning. "Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects," Pascal tells us (Pascal, p. 7). Although this is true of Pascal's French, it is even more true of English: English works on word order. If we move the words, we change the meaning. In the sentences "The dog bit the man" and "The man bit the dog," position alone tells us who got bit. Similarly, we can tell a noun and its adjective

106 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

from their positions, because the adjective usually comes first: We do not pick the flower yellow, but the yellow flower. We know something about the "sabu- lous astrachan" without knowing either of the meanings; we know that sabulous is an adjective describing the noun astrachan (astrachan is a type of apple, and sabulous means it would not taste very good). Where we place the word makes it what it is. If we carefully place our words and phrases, we avoid confusing struc- tures such as misplaced modifiers and dangling participles. We more closely approach clear thinking.

The Power Parts: Noun and Verb

Our fundamental and most frequent word order is simply one, two, three; sub- ject, verb, object. These foundational positions in our language and in our thinking are filled by nouns and verbs, the power parts of our language. If we pay attention to the nouns and verbs in our thinking, we usually do not need a list of adjectives to dress up the noun or a string of adverbs to activate the verb. Instead we can select concrete nouns and verbs; for instance, instead of saying, "The huge, hairy, strong, ugly man moved heavily and powerfully across the floor," we can say, "The gorilla thundered across the floor."

Can you feel the powerful difference in that sentence? With fewes than half the words, the "thundering gorilla" strikes the mind with far greater impact. Similarly, if we wish to "move" a woman across the room, we could select from sashay, stroll, saunter, amble, wiggle, stumble, glide, float, slither, dance, pirouette, undulate, or flow. If we tend to use too many adjectives and adverbs to color our thoughts, we may wish to search harder for the concrete nouns and vivid verbs that form the bull's-eyes of our thinking.

Thinking and the Context

Larger than any single utterance is the surround: the speakers, the place, the time, the action, and all that preceded that utterance. A white sphere on green makes no sense until the context appears: An outfielder picks it up off the grass; a cue stick strikes the white ball across the green felt toward a fresh rack of balls; a metal club hits the white ball toward a hole in the green. Context is what makes sense of the sphere and the green, and indeed, of almost all the words. Whenever we use words, we want to think about the context. In a nationally tel- evised debate, a vice-presidential candidate said that the cost ofhis opponent's en- vironmental program would be $100 billion. To make his statement appear true he actually cited the page number in his opponent's book. What the candidate left out was the context that said the environmental program was international and that the cost would be borne by many countries such as Germany and Japan. Because the audience was American, they naturally presumed that they would

The Pitfalls of English 107

foot the bill. Such distortions approach lying. If the truth is bent, it is no longer the truth .

Context can be so strong that satire or tone of voice can turn a text around. A man at the airport was greeting a friend, hugging and pounding the friend on the back while cursing him profusely. The meaning of the insulting words was reversed by the context. Without context we have no reference points to direct our thinking. Without context we have no ground upon which to build our thinking. Without context we cannot think clearly.

Clarity

Clarity comes from doing everything right. If we are aware that the generalizing power of language can be a weakness, then we are careful to use concrete, exact language. If we are aware of the multiple meanings of words and of the audi- ence's background, we can define terms carefully and position our words exactly. Like clear gems, clarity is rare and valuable and greatly to be sought at all points of our thinking.

'p . ' •.t~~~ ... ,'.:' •

CLEARLY EMBARRASSING ·~j: ,_,,,,··

Without cla rity and ca ution some red-faced embarrassment might result. The followi ng quotati ons are from letters written to a welfare department.

In accordance with your instructions I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope.

1 ca nnot get sick pay. I have six chi ldren . Can you tell me why? This is my eighth ch ild. What are you going to do about it? Mrs. Jones has not had any clothes for a year and has been visited

reg ul ar ly by the clergy. 1 want my money as quick as I can get it. I've been in bed with the

doctor for two weeks and he doesn't do me any good. Yo u have cha nged my little boy to a girl. Will th is make a difference?

English has the same limitations that all languages have: It structures our per- ceptions and our memory, and it is subject to inaccurate definitions, conflict- ing connotations, ambiguous positioning, and distorting euphemisms. In

108 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

addition, because of the huge and flexible vocabulary of English, if we are not alert we can cloud our thinking with weak generalizations, wordiness, illogical- ness, redundancies, and cliches.

Generalizations and Abstractions

Although we need generalizations and abstractions, such as principles, natural laws, formulas, and theories, to help us to understand the relationship between the parts, generalizations and abstractions are greatly overused. To think and communicate clearly, we would do well to flesh out our generalizations with ex- amples. One of those often-used 80-20 rules offers a good norm. Use 80 percent examples, facts, analogies, cham, statistics, concrete words, and specific words to support the 20 percent generalizations and abstractions.

HIGH SPECIFICITY

An excellent example of this high ratio of specificity to generalization is the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn," by John Keats . Keats crafts most of the words in the poem to appeal to the senses as he describes syl- van and pastoral scenes, marble men and maidens, and the melodies and songs of pipes and timbrels before he concludes with this general- ization:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The 80-20 guideline keeps our thinking grounded in facts and ensures that our communication will appeal to the senses.

THINK ABOUT IT: Surprisingly, even the verb "to be" can be very vague (Bourland, 2004, p. 546). For instance, if you say Mary is a sci- entist, you identify her with a broad occupation and you leave out a lot about her area of science. Even if you say Mary is a geneticist or geologist, you still/eave out a lot. Consider these sentences which omit "to be": Mary searches for genes that cause deafness. Or, Mary measures the rise in land areas to find "blind thrusts" which can cause sudden, unpredictable earthquakes.

The Pitfalls of English 109

Wordiness

With more than a million words to think with, it is understandably easy to get trapped in their intricacy and lose sight of straight thinking. Bacon notes that "the first distemper of learning" occurs when we "study words and not matter" (Bacon, p. 223). Illustrating this "distemper," the National Bureau of Standards gave this advice to a plumber: "The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable but the ionic residues are incompatible with metallic permanence." When the plumber could not understand, someone at the bureau wrote: "Don't use hy- drochloric acid! It eats the hell out of the pipes!" The contrast in these instruc- tions illustrates the challenge to our thinking: Keep our statements and explanations simple and brief but also make them accurate and complete. As we will see in Chapter 13, simplicity and brevity are so important that they are sometimes tests of the quality of our thinking.

Redundancies

A certain form of wordiness, called redundancy, is easy to avoid if we become aware of it. Although redundancies do not make our thinking inaccurate, they dilute it, causing it to lose its tight force. For the most part we can avoid expres- sions such as "in the month of June," but at other times we cannot avoid ex- pressions like "the Milky Way galaxy" (galaxy means milky way, so we are saying "the milky way milky way"). A redundancy is a needless repetition, which can be distinguished from an emphatic repetition (as in "government of the people, by the people, for the people"), which reinforces our thinking.

Illogicalities

Our language is not always logical. It was not designed by logicians or mathemati- cians but grew from living speakers, even though a nineteenth-century mathemati- cian did attempt to give our language the double-negative rule that two negatives make a positive, literature is full of examples of using multiple negatives to say "no," including King Lear's anguished declaration as he holds his dead daughter: "Never, never, never, never, never!" Additionally, words with multiple meanings can equivocate, and if they are placed carelessly, they can cause ambiguity; for ex- ample, would a small car shop be able to fix your Hummer? Or if you were told that Joan fought the man with the knife, would you know for sure who held the knife? This kind of syntactic ambiguity is called the fallacy of amphiboly, from the Greek word amphiboly, which means to "throw both ways."

Language inconsistency can be infuriating; for example, inflammable mate- rial will burn, but incombustible material will not; and bicentennial means every two hundred years, but biannual can mean every two years, or twice a year. Per- haps it is more helpful to laugh at the foibles oflanguage. For instance, why does

110 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

Hawaii have interstate highways? And if vegetarians eat vegetables, what do "hu- manitarians" eat? And enjoy the following caused by equivocation and arnphi- boly: Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers. Panda matingfoils, veterinarian takes over. Prostitutes appeal to Pope. Red tape holds up new bridges. Local high school dropouts cut in half The more we are aware of the overlapping and illogical nature of language, the better we can choose our words to think clearly.

THINK ABOUT IT: The pitfalls inherent in all languages can be com- pounded by translation. The name of the Chevy model Nova means "no go" in Spanish. Would you buy a car so named? The Coca-Cola slogan "Coke adds life" was translated in a Chinese ad as "Coke brings your ancestors back from the dead." Problems occur in translating terms into English as well. Two medical remedies were suggested in a book. Would you use them if you knew that nux vomica and rhus toxicodendron were translated "poison nut" and "poison oak''?

Cliches

A cliche can be a sign that we are not doing our own thinking. In their original formulation, the thinking behind cliches was brilliant, but time and repetition have worn them into dull emptiness. When we use cliches, we are using some- one else's old formulation, and we are probably not aware of our own sensing, feeling, thinking, and communicating; At every level of the thinking process, cliches are embalming. We can avoid cliches by restating them simply, saying "quit" instead of"throw in the towel," for example. Or sometimes we can reforge cliches such as "let sleeping dogs lie" into something like "Don't taunt the tiger."

SUMMARY

Language is the landscape of our mind; it is the mountains and forests as well as the cities and roads. It both carries the content and structures the form. We think with it. Language works intimately with all aspects of our thinking, which we discuss in other chapters: sensing, feeling, remembering, creating, organiz- ing, reasoning, evaluating, deciding, persuading, and acting. As we become more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of language, and as we increase and refine our own language, we will think better.

We have presented language as the software of our minds, without which most of our thinking would not be possible. For the practical purpose of discussing

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Summary 111

thinking, we have defined thinking as "expressed thought." Language is the ve- hicle that carries that thought, but more than vehicle, language is both the con- tainer and the thought contained.

We have shown that language gives universalizing power to the mind, that language structures our perceptions, and that the metaphor plays a crucial role in the way language works and the way we think. Conversely, we have seen that the universalizing, structuring, metaphorical nature of language can also con- strict our minds.

Finally, we have learned that English is a rich language that is still evolving, and that its word order determines meaning. We can more quickly access its huge word bank, thus gaining more words to think with, by paying attention to stems and affixes. To avoid being redundant, wordy, illogical, or cliched in our thinking, we can define precisely, connote carefully, concretize our nouns, acti- vate our verbs, and seek the power of the metaphor; thus we will energize our thinking.

Although we have concluded a short chapter on a huge topic, we do not leave language behind-we cannot. We think in it.

language Challenges

1. Although we share language with all speakers, we also have our own phrases from our parents, from our local region, and from the unique way we com- bine all the language we have heard from our birth with our mental struc- tures and our interests. Try to identify the language structures that are in your mind. This might be difficult because we are often unaware of some- thing so close to us as our language. For example, a good beginning is to an- alyze something we have written or taped. In the next several months you might gain greater awareness of your language patterns if you attend to them. Seek the unique state of language in your brain.

2. An excellent way to boost your understanding of English is to read reflec- tively and listen alertly for patterns and meanings of words. Read one page of any book or article and analyze it. Look closely at the position of each word, the kinds of words used, and the subtle connotations of those words used together in that pattern.

3. One way to increase your language awareness is to listen to a good speaker. Identify different aspects of the speech, such as word order, metaphors, and anything else that demonstrates strong thinking.

4. "If you can't say it, you don't know it." Do you agree?

5. What are some of the underlying metaphors in your major field of studies? Reread the section "Metaphorical Models Control Thinking" for some ideas, if needed.

112 CHAPTER 5 • Language: Our Thinking Medium

6. When we don't understand something, we search for a model or metaphor. What are some of the possibilities and limitations of the metaphor as a model for the brain?

7. Can you think of any times when you struggled to explain something and came up with the wrong analogy that was either laughed at or misled your thinking?

8. If George Orwell thought that the decline of England was related to the de- terioration of the English language, are the numbers and kinds of eu- phemisms we use today a sign of the decline of the American culture?

9. What topics or situations prompt you to use euphemisms? 10. Language does not exist as an absolute but is determined by use. Consider

the U.S. congressman (who probably did not know he was using an intran- sitive verb transitively) describing an impending change: "If they don't cut the crap, something's going to happen, and I'm going to happen it." Tech- nically, the congressman violated a rule of language, yet he communicated effectively. How do you determine when it is effective to break the rules of language to emphasize your point?

11. Eubonics, a blend of eu meaning "well" and ebony meaning "black" caused a stir in the nineties. Some argued that eubonics, based on the language pat- terns of many African Americans, was breaking the rules of English, and others argued that it was a new language. Regardless of that linguistic issue, if people use eubonics, are they thinking differently?

12. A sensitivity to patterns influences your ability to think with more accurate words. Language is full of patterns, some of which are not in the grammar books. For instance, what does the ump mean in lump, dump, stump, hump, mumps, and clump? Can you find any other patterns by looking for rhyming words?

13. Is it true that the metaphor is a bridge that spans our differences and allows us to communicate? If you find any validity in that thought, what does it mean in terms of your future thinking?

14. Word order is so importaht that it can change parts of speech. For instance Shakespeare changed a noun into a verb when he said, ''I'll unhair your head." You might wish to experiment with word order by taking one word and moving it around in a sentence and observing the effects on meaning.

15. In chemistry, it makes a great deal of difference whether the water is poured into a container first and then the sulfuric acid, or the other way around; in one sequence there is a solution and in the other an explosion. Likewise, in thinking, placing the right or the wrong word first can lead to communica- tion or disaster. Can you think of examples?

Summary 113

16. In Chicago a man was indicted for molesting children. What do you think of when you hear the word indicted? Is the word slowly changing meaning? By definition, the word means "accused." How many people hear the word and presume guilt? Even the indicted man's wife, learning of the indictment, said, "That's why I was so hurt." Does her response suggest that the term implies guilt?

17. How would different metaphors affect the way a child is raised? What if the metaphors for raising a child were growing a tree, building a house, or mak- ing a Stradivarius violin? (Barker, 1998).

18. What does Wittgenstein mean when he says that "the limits of my language are the limits of my life"? Do you agree?

FEELING

I felt before I thought. -ROUSSEAU

What does feeling have to do with thinking? Why a chapter on feelings? In some ways thinking and feeling are almost opposites: thinking is cerebral, feeling is vis- ceral; thinking is often clear, feeling is confused; Thinking can be readily expressed verbally, feeling often struggles to find words; thinking is strikingly human (Ho mo sapiens), whereas the physiological responses from feelings are shared by many an- imals. Looking at these contrasts, it is tempting to ignore feelings and focus exclu- sively on our rationality; however, if we do so, we will fail to tap an enormous energy source that can animate our thinking and help forge eloquence.

Brilliantly joining both body and brain, Aristotle calls us "rational animals. Proportionally we are far more body than brain. A three-pound brain sits on top o: our body, and the thinking part of our brain, the cerebral cortex, is only a coveri!1f for the rest of our brain. If we weigh about 150 pounds, we are about 98 percen: body and only 2 percent brain.

But body-to-brain weight is less important than the connections betweeL them. The rather large body is connected to the brain and directed through a sm<L spinal cord and its neural network. The powerful emotions we feel are triggered ~

114

Cultural Context 115

a complex system of glands, hormones, enzymes, and neurons. It seems our thoughts and feelings fan and fuel each other, blot and cool each other.

In discussing our personal barriers we have seen how feelings can block and bias thought. In this chapter, we scan our cultural context, which largely deni- grates our feelings, making them hard to understand and use. Then we look at our feelings as a positive force behind our thoughts; we enlarge the context of feelings to include strong beliefs, prejudices, and even values, for, as we will show, there is a strong emotional as well as a cognitive content to those areas of human thinking/feeling. Finally, we will present methods of using feelings to generate powerful thinking in the forms of speaking and writing.

THINK ABOUT IT: Antonio Damasio says humans make "split- second emotional assessments of situations all the time, assessments that unfold so quickly that we're usually not aware of the process" (Johnson, 2004). If our emotions operate quickly and behind the scene, we can wonder about how they affect our thinking. Much earlier, Rousseau had said that it was "impossible to conceive why a man ex- empt from fears and desires should take the trouble to reason." Do you agree with him? He went further to say that "it is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves" (1755). Do you agree with this bold statement that our passions improve our reason? If so, how might they?

It is difficult to know our feelings and to use them to think when our society suppresses most public expressions of feelings. This downplaying of feelings is part of our European heritage of rationalism, puritanism, and even stoicism. Our founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, drew directly from thinkers like Montesquieu and Locke, who thought that the "enlightened" human mind would soon solve all problems, social as well as scientific. This rational founda- tion combined with the austere religious outlook of puritanism, which fitted the harsh pioneer existence. Out of these forces emerged an early American tem- perament not unlike that of the Roman stoics. Today, some of this temperament is still with us. This same downgrading of feelings and emphasis upon the mind, emotional restraint, and toughness can be seen in the business world, the church, and the family.

116 CHAPTER 6 • Feeling

Business

Can you think of any businesses that allow their employees to rant at the boss? How long would their jobs last? On the positive side, can you think of many businesses that allow their employees to emit screams of joy or laughter, let out whoops of exaltation, or show approval with hugs and kisses? Rather, the ex- pected norm is that of the cool, rational, objective, decision processor, the exec- utive who knows the facts, reasons to a profitable conclusion, and then issues the orders. We hear references to "the tough-minded business exec" and the "lean and mean" company. Such phrases imply some limited feelings, but again, mainly along the line of stoicism or strict control.

Church

At times the major religion in our Western society, Christianity, sings hallelujah, but the dominant message from Christian religions has been that feelings can lead us into trouble, called "sin." Sin is often nothing other than feelings out of control. Consider some of the "capital sins" of lust, avarice, gluttony, envy, and vengeance. In all of those sins, feelings have gone to excess. So according to Christianity, it is often feelings that tempt the mind and lead people astray and, in the worst of scenarios, to hell. Christianity teaches its followers to control and suppress those feelings, for this life is mainly a test of the spirit, which will live forever.

Family

Although the American family sometimes allows room to scream and yell, and perhaps even physically fight with siblings, it also carries a clear message to boys-don't be a wimp, control your feelings-and to girls, who have tradition- ally been allowed more leeway-don't get hysterical or throw tantrums. In short, feelings are frequently looked upon as childish and a sign of weakness.

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.

-HEGEL

Pascal calls the relationship between reason and feeling "an eternal battle." If we view our feelings as Pascal describes them, as battling with our mind, then we have a dangerous adversary; on the other hand, if we join forces with our feel- ings, we have a powerful ally.

The Force Behind Our Thoughts 117

Beneath the Rational Surface

It has been our experience, working with many levels of intelligent, successful persons such as university and college professors, Jesuits, and CEOs, that needs and wants drive thinking. Most of the time people "know" what they want (often this knowing is a feeling), and then they develop reasons to convince themselves or others that their wants are good. Rarely have we met a person who approaches most situations with an objective, data-gathering mind that considers most angles and interests and attempts to make decisions with long-range vision. And para- doxically, sometimes the people who claim to be most objective, who claim to base all their decisions on facts, are least known to themselves. Their feelings are hidden to themselves; consequently, the hidden feelings may function more strongly and perhaps more dangerously.

Closely related to needs and wants are values, beliefs, prejudices, and morals. These root elements are usually formed early in life, taught by parents, modeled by peers, and become firmly fixed. Although reasons to justify our root elements are readily available to the mind, the reasons are not usually why we hold onto our val- ues, beliefs, prejudices, and morals; the feelings are. Thinking and feeling flows both ways. Thoughts can influence our feelings so strongly that cognitive therapy, which changes the way we think about things, is an excellent way to shape our feel- ings. Fortunately, we are often aware of our thoughts, and thus we have the ability to adjust them and their impact on our emotions; however, we are often less aware of our feelings and therefore we need to identify and deal with them. Our feelings are like the magma beneath the surface that fuels the erupting volcano.

The Importance of Tone

So strong is the force of our feelings that it can override the content of our mes- sage. In almost all instances the tone carries the real meaning; however, rarely can the verbal content override the tone. If someone does not like us, behind their attempt to project a friendly voice may be a tone of antipathy. We can hear it. If someone doesn't love us and says they do, we can hear the tone. If our friend is sad and to our greeting of "How are you?" answers "Fine," we can hear the slow droop in the voice. The tone does not easily lie. Voice-stress indicators, al- ready in use in law enforcement agencies, have been successful in detecting the ronal stress from someone who is lying.

Tone is simply the attitude we have toward a subject or an audience. If we detest our topic (maybe centipedes or copperheads), that tone of repulsion will show through. And if we have a superior, haughty, unfriendly, belittling attitude toward those hearing or reading our thoughts, that tone too will show.

Surprisingly, the same truthfulness of tone comes across even in writing. We asked thirteen honor students at the University of Illinois at Chicago to write

118 CHAPTER 6 • Feeling

sincere position papers and another thirteen honor students to write insincere pa- pers. The "insincere" group was instructed to write as if they actually believed their position, using the thoughts and vocabulary of those who held that position; basi- cally, the task of the "insincere" group was to lie as convincingly as possible. Each of the twenty-six papers was read by four other students in the group who did not know the actual position of the authors. The readers had one task, to determine the sincerity or insincerity of the papers. Out of the 104 decisions made (26 X 4 = 104), only two judged incorrectly. Stunningly, more than 98 percent of the time the readers were able to discern the real tone of the papers. Thus, even in writing, tone clearly signals its message. So it becomes important to tune in to the tone of others to interpret their expressed thought; likewise, we want to tune into our own tone and match it to our thoughts as we speak and write. If our feeling and think- ing are congruent, then our message will carry the force of our personal truth.

IIUNFJIUNfl- • Feelings Beneath Our Thoughts

What are the feelings behind your thinking and acting? What feelings un- derlie the choices you make? What, deep down, really drives you as you select, choose, and decide? Consider your relationships, school activities, behavior at work, and your cherished beliefs and values. Write down some of these areas below, and then note the feelings that influence your actions and decisions:

Were you able to discover any feelings behind your thoughts? Did you find your feelings to be a bigger part of your thinking than you had expected? If someone you despised approached you, what would you start thinking? Would those thoughts be driven by your feelings toward that person?

Feeling follows thought. Try it. Think about anything that is highly emotional and you will begin to feel those emotions. Think of a time when you were very happy or sad, and quire quickly you will begin to feel those emotions. Your

Generating Speech 119

thinking about it made you feel it. So if you are experiencing an emotion you do not wish, such as sorrow that is about to make you cry in public, change your thoughts to something strongly different-the time you were in a very happy, exciting place. Shortly your feelings will probably line up with your thinking, and you will no longer be near to tears.

This close connection between thinking and feeling is being studied in the brain:

Modern imaging research is starting to show rwo distinct patterns. One is that the brain biology of people experiencing transient sadness is similar to that of others with deep-seated depression. That suggests that sadness and depression have much in common and that some minds just aren't able to switch out of that state. The other pattern is that intense emotions set up a tug of war berween the ancient limbic system and the more modern cortex, especially the frontal lobes where thinking and planning take precedence. As sadness or depression pro- gresses, the limbic system goes into overdrive, firing its neurons while the think- ing part shuts down. "The brain may be forced to pick and choose. You can't sneeze and keep your eyes open at the same time. That's hard-wired. Maybe it's the same with emotion," says Mayberg [a neurologist at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto]. Depressed people, she says, have tremendous difficulty concentrating even on ordinary tasks. Healthy people can snap out of sadness as the thinking part of the brain fights back. (Sheppard, 2000, EBSCOhost online)

We have a powerful insight here. If we think happy thoughts, we are more likely to feel happy-it's the old adage, do we choose to see the glass as half full? With repetition, habits form, and we may develop more frequent, more regular pat- terns of thinking that produce the emotions we wish. Think, and your feelings will follow.

It is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent. -QUINTILLIAN, ROMAN RHETORJCIAN

How does the pressure of feelings motivate our thinking? Think of a time when you were really happy; perhaps you had just gotten great news, and you rushed to tell a friend. Were your feelings churning out words faster than you usually talk? Or consider a time when you were angry and you told someone just what you felt. Did those words have any trouble coming out hot and heavy and fast? Were you at a loss to find words?

As you can see from reflecting on such situations, feelings can naturally flow into words. We call it fluency. To take two examples, a lawyer who wins most of her cases told us that she researches thoroughly, prepares carefully, takes clients

120 CHAPTER 6 • Feeling

in whom she believes, and then in her final appeal to the jury she "lets it rip." Af- terwards, when she listens to the court tapes, she is usually amazed at her own eloquence. Similarly, a college debater who won all of his debates made a similar remark about how he argued his final rebuttal position in one debate. He told us he prepared thoroughly and then got so emotionally involved in the verbal fight that his words poured out on their own. Led by the force of his emotions, his verbal eloquence built and swept over his opponent's arguments like a wave over a sand castle.

THINK ABOUT IT: Both of these speakers prepared themselves fully with careful thinking and research . Then they trusted their feel- ings to strike lightning and thunder.

We expect good speakers to animate their thinking with feelings. If they did not, we might become bored, suppress a yawn, or even try to slip out of the audience. A reader can drop a book far easier than someone can leave an audience; there- fore, in some ways a writer needs to use feelings even more than a speaker. Be- cause words on a paper are read at the whim of the reader, the words must have a vigorous and appropriately emotional tone. We will look at some ways to use emotions to both generate and enhance one's writings.

The Inspiration Method

Sing to me, oh goddess.

-HOMER

Sometimes our thoughts seem to jump into our minds. To the Greek poets, ideas struck so suddenly that they seemed to come from some power seizing the mind. They attributed this force to minor deities, called the Muses, and the Greeks called upon these Muses to inspire their writings. In his Republic, Plato called this inspiration "a poetic frenzy that rapts the writer into the seventh heaven." (Because Plato banished poets from his republic, he was probably referring to their drunken Dionysian rites; Plato would certainly not like our using him to support the role of feelings in writing.)

If we wish to use feelings to inspire our writing, the next time we feel a pow- erful burst of emotions we might pick up a pen and start to write; however, we

Feelings Toward Topic and Audience 121

do not usually have a pen in hand during emotional experiences, as for example, when we are slamming on the brakes to avoid a car collision. So we need to in- spire ourselves by artificially arousing our feelings, such as joy or anger, and to work ourselves into a partial "frenzy" before we write. The words will come.

The Recollection Method

Perhaps a more natural use of emotions is to follow Wordsworth's approach to writing poems. Wordsworth says that great writing comes from "emotion recol- lected in tranquility" (preface to Lyrical Ballads). So instead of being immedi- ately involved in the emotional event, we recall it later with pen in hand. We can try this recollection method by first finding a tranquil space. Then we pick an experience that was emotionally moving and begin to write about it without worrying a lot about what comes out, since we can revise it later. If you try this, you may be stunned by the power and fluency of your words.

The Conscious Selection Method

Instead of using feelings to fuel thoughts, the modern poet T. S. Eliot con- sciously chose words to evoke emotions in the reader. He called his theory the "objective correlative"-a big term that means people hearing a word, such as "mother," have corresponding but different feelings for that word. Eliot employed this principle in many of his poems; for instance, in his poem "The Hollow Men," he showed people alienated and unable to relate by describing their voices as "wind in dried grass" or "rats' feet over broken glass."

We can try this process first by picking an emotion, then by making a list of tangible, seeable words that evoke that emotion, and finally, by consciously con- structing phrases from the list. For example, if we want to arouse the feeling of American patriotism, we might list the flag, baseball, George Washington, mother- hood, apple pie, the Constitution, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the Bill of Rights, the land of the free, and so on. Or if we want to create a serene scene, we might use images like a cozy fire, flowers flowing in the wind, a sleeping child, the sun caressing the skin, a soft-throated sax, a sunset water song, an easy chair, or a rainbow over clouds. Perhaps as you read those lists of consciously selected images, you felt the corresponding emotions. If so, Eliot's theory worked.

Now that we have seen some of the powerful interactions between feelings and thoughts, we can tap this power. First, we can be aware of how we feel about the topic that we are thinking about, talking about, or writing about. This awareness

122 CHAPTER 6 • Feeling

will help us realize our deep and often buried attitudes, values, beliefs, likes, or dislikes concerning the current topic. This awareness will help us understand and evaluate our thinking and then adjust it toward greater objectivity and ac- curacy.

Second, we need to check our feelings toward our audience. For instance, if we have negative feelings toward our audience and if we are not aware of the negativity, we will speak or write with an adverse tone. That tone will be picked up by the audience who will judge us quite differently because we are hostile rather than friendly (Aristotle, Rhetoric I, 2). However, if we are aware of the hostility, we can then choose to be silent, to carefully modulate it, or to express it in a number of ways of our choosing, being well aware of the potential impact on our audience. By controlling our feelings and by considering the audience, we can reach the audience more effectively.

Finally, within thoughtful bounds, we can trust our feelings as a positive force. When we feel positive about the topic and the audience, we can let our feelings out and let them work for us. We can use our feelings to bring ourselves alive as thinkers, speakers, and writers. Most great speakers and writers feel strongly about their thoughts. These strong feelings lead to the ringing elo- quence of speakers like Patrick Henry, who famously said, "I know not what choice others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."

Evoking Emotions

Try Eliot's more conscious manipulation of emotions. Make a list of images that evoke fear, a second list for tenderness, and in the third column be- low, write images for an emotion of your choice.

Fear Tenderness

Now select from your lists those items that best seem to bring out each emotion . Write a paragraph using those items and then discuss with your readers whether your words produce the desired emotion.

Summary 123

Awareness of others' feelings and empathy for them is a necessary part of social thinking. If we closely watch the faces of others, without staring, we will begin to be able to read their nonverbal signals, which are in the form of feelings. Some emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, peacefulness, and love are almost universally recognizable across cultures, even when the words of the language are not known. To read these emotions, observe primarily the eyes and secondarily the mouth. In general both the eyes and the mouth will move in sync, either tightening or opening as the feelings develop inside the person. Usually we can trust these nonverbal signals even more than the words; for instance, if you ask your friend how she feels and she says "fine," yet her body droops, her head hangs, her eyes are partially closed and her mouth is turned down, you know how she really feels, and you know it from her nonverbal signals. Your next step is to check your observations with such words as: "You look really tired. Having a bad day?" If you add empathy to your words, if you care about your friend, you will probably bring out a trusting, honest response.

SUMMARY

We have seen that feelings are a force behind our thinking; however, our culture, in areas such as business, religion, and family, often denigrates feelings . Never- theless, these feelings are there and they charge our words with a tone so strong that it cannot be ignored. Our feelings can be the constructive energy to gener- ate our thoughts and deliver them eloquently. We found that the emotional tone of our words could override the content, and we looked at ways to control those emotions. More specifically, we looked at the inspiration, recollection, and con- scious selection methods of using feelings to fuel our thoughts and express them powerfully and positively.

Thinking and Feeling Challenges

1. Assess Pascal's statement, "Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning."

2. Can you remember times when your body was paralyzed by fear? Can you recall times when you have blanked while taking a test or giving a speech or were at a loss for words because of the pressure? If a similar situation occurs, what could you do to manage such emotional forces?

3. How does your language reflect what our culture "thinks" about feelings? For instance, some positive words to describe an emotional male are sensitive and

124 CHAPTER 6 • Feeling

kind; can you think of other positive or negative words to describe an emotional male? Think of other examples that reflect our culture's attitude toward feelings.

4. How extensive is your vocabulary for describing feelings? To answer this question, begin by listing all the words you can think of to describe love, hate, anger, or fear.

5. To begin to grow more aware of your feelings for certain topics, rate your feelings toward the items on the following list (0 = neutral, 10 = the best, -10 = the worst).

snakes _ sunrises _ politicians _ sports heroes

flowers _ earthworms - chocolate _ children teachers - ice cream _ this book _parties exams cars houses forests

6. Rousseau said, "I felt before I thought," and e. e. cummings said, "Feeling is first." Are these statements that only romanticists or poets would make? What might they mean?

7. Describe what the American culture thinks about emotions. Give examples to support your description.

8. When you hear the next person talk, listen to the tone, the feelings under- neath the thoughts, and describe them. Is the tone congruent with the ver- bal content?

9. The next time you write something or think about what words you will use to say something to someone, stop and identify your tone. How do you feel about the subject you are thinking about, and how do you feel about the person who will receive your words?

10. Take any paragraph of this book, and identify the tone that goes with the words. Is the tone strong enough, too weak, inappropriate, or effective?

11. Experiment some more with the inspiration, recollection, or conscious selec- tion method of finding and using your feelings. Begin by taking any topic you feel strongly about and write fast for five minutes. Let your feelings pour and empower the words. When you are finished, you might be surprised by both the quantity of the words and a certain raw eloquence. Did your strong feelings help you generate any worthwhile thoughts? Can you keep the words in that form, or do you need to refine them for public communication? If so, refine them, and then discuss your experience and your writings.

12. Pascal states that the heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of. How do you evaluate that statement?

13. Since much of this chapter is about integrating thought and emotion, you might wish to reflect upon the interplay of emotions and reason within your own thinking.

CREATIVE THINKING

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-EINSTEIN

"I' . '" I 1 ve got 1t. we want to scream. n ours eep, - a ball game, on a bike, in a car, the idea springs into our mind, powerfully. So _?Owerful is this burst of insight that when Archimedes discovered how to calcu~ -re the volume of gold in the king's crown, he jumped out of the bath and ran

:laked through the streets yelling, "Eureka! I've found it!" In this chapter we do - or run naked and screaming, but we do yell "Eureka!" Here we see that creative ;:ainking is crucial to critical thinking; we probe our awareness of the elusive mo-

ent and process of creativity; and best of all, we find that we too are creative md capable of increasing our creative thinking. More specifically, we define cre-

'vity, look at its metaphorical nature, and discuss its limitations and condi~ _ ns. Then we practice creative thinking through brainstorming, starbursting, and :oaxing creativity. Creativity is an early base of our thinking because one of its .:..:.nctions is to produce the thoughts we think with. Creativity operates at the : int of acquiring thoughts (in classical rhetoric this process of acquiring - ought is called "topics" by the Greeks and "invention" by the Romans). Yet,

e all the thinking bases, creativity is used throughout our thinking and can be ::alled upon at any time.

125

126 CHAPTER 7 • Creative Thinking

To create, we change the old into the new. We do not create out of nothing. The Wright brothers took four old ideas (a fan blade, a bicycle chain, a gasoline engine, and wings) and "created" the airplane. Edison took three old ideas (a glass con- tainer, a vacuum, and electricity through a filament) and created the light bulb.

Creating is taking the old and mixing it, moving it, breaking it, or building it into newness. Sometimes we take a piece of the whole (a tree branch becomes a baseball bat), or two pieces from different wholes (br from breakfast and unch from lunch become brunch), or one piece and one whole (a typewriter keyboard is added to a computer), or two wholes (music and television become MTV) . Sometimes we keep one part and change or add other parts (tea bags become coffee bags, a water ski becomes a jet ski), or we simply move some parts (front- wheel drive). We turn some elements around (Dick Fosbury goes over the high jump bar backward and the "Fosbury flop" becomes the standard). We change an object's use (a glass mug becomes a vase becomes a pencil holder) or omit a part of it (half of a watermelon becomes a fruit dish). We superimpose one concept on another (a carved face transforms a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern) or impose form on a raw material (a block of marble metamorphoses into Michaelangelo's David) .

In all of these examples, change takes place and newness results. The mind sees a new relationship or comparison between or among the objects or their parts. This relationship is, broadly speaking, a metaphorical relationship. In short, creating is making metaphors.

At the heart of creativity, language, understanding, and thinking is the metaphor. We have defined the metaphor as "an implied comparison between two things" (see Chapter 5). When we take the old and change it, we are using the metaphorical ability of our mind, the ability to look at one thing and see an- other. Whether Edison is searching for a new light source or Shakespeare for a new image for life, the process is similar.

Because the metaphor is the way language works (there is no other way), all great communkators forge metaphors. Aristotle calls the metaphor the funda- mental figure of speech, the true mark of genius. Homer's warriors are tall trees felled in battle, Confucius speaks of shoots that spring up but bear no fruit, Chuang Tzu's sage tucks the universe under his arm, Christ speaks of seed falling by the wayside, Dante covers the hypocrites in hell with gilded lead coats, and Montaigne calls his book totally his own child because he was both father and mother at once.

Metaphorical Th inking 127

Shakespeare was the master of the metaphor. He used metaphors more frequently as his language matured in his great tragedies. Notice how Shakespeare, in this passage from Macbeth, takes four common concepts (a candle, a shadow, an actor, and a story) and transforms them into metaphors for the brevity, frailty, and incoherence of life:

Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare's creativity and communicative power have thundered through the ages. As we learn to know, trust, and tap our own metaphorical mind, we too will think and communicate more effectively.

We know and understand the world through metaphors. If language is the mode in which our mind understands the world, and if metaphors are at the heart of language, then metaphors are at the heart of our understanding of the world. (Not only have we just used a metaphor, but we have also used a syllogism, a form of thinking discussed later.)

Making Metaphors

To think of other metaphors for the brevity of life, list things that last for a short t im e.

You have just used metaphorical thinking . If you take one or two items from your list and give them the proper context, you will probably have metaphors for the shortness of life. Moreover, you have just done one of the more profound tasks that you can perform as a human: You have cre- ated! Shortly, you will learn other ways to think creatively.

128 CHAPTER 7 • Creative Thinking

Creativity can take many forms-from cooking to chemistry, from art to arche- ology, from poetry to physics, from shanty to Chartres, from Mona Lisa to Madonna, from seamstress to surgeon, from baseball to battle, from making laws to making love. Creativity can be seen in the range, kind, and quantity of responses to any given situation. Creativity is barely bound and hardly deter- mined. It swings out with the quasars to the edge of the expanding universe, and it bends inward to the metaphor-making center of our mind. No one has a lock on creativity, and that allows us to think about unlocking our own.

We can all think creatively. In fact, much of our thinking is in some way con- nected to creativity; constantly there are variations in the processes of our un- folding thoughts. Even when we appear to be thinking in a rut or thinking in circles, if we carefully reflect on the patterns of our thought, we will probably discover that they do not repeat exactly; and even when we are intentionally re- peating a pattern, such as memorized lines, the lines do not always march into memory with the regularity of a metronome; often they come haltingly, in pieces, or in tidal waves of changing patterns, even though when we go to speak our thoughts, we might enunciate them smoothly.

People often think of creativity as a talent or a gift held by the few. That's what we as teachers used to think, that creativity was limited to a few students who were creative. Then we performed an icebreaker activity in which each student was asked to come up with an image, or poetic impression, of the other students in class. The results were astounding. Every student created some metaphors, which were often brilliant. We were stunned. Our first guess was that the group of stu- dents were extraordinarily bright. We pulled the records and found that the class was carrying a 1. 9 average (less than a C)! Our next thought was that perhaps these were all underachieving creative geniuses. We tried the same activity in another class and got the same results: All students produced metaphors, often excellent ones. If you wish to try that same experiment, use Thinking Activity 7 .2.

Poetic Impressions

1. Write the first name of each student in a column down the left side of a piece of paper. Then attempt to get one image each for as many students as you can. A simple example is, "You appear like a mountain,

Conditions and Limitations of Creativity 129

strong and sure of your place in the world." Here is a more complex one: "You appear like a mirror in a foggy room, sometimes the mist clears and I think I see you clear, bright. and smiling, and then at other times you seem to withdraw and I have no idea of how you would react if I approached you."

2. Look at a student and let an image pop into your mind. You can draw upon nature (mountains, lakes, trees, flowers, animals), household scenes (rocking chair, warm fireplace, comforter, kitchen cooking, closed attic), or any other setting, but your image should be a nonhuman one.

3. If an image does not spring to mind, try completing sentences like these: "He/she looks like a __ " (physical image), or "He/she seems rigid and tough like a __ " (personality image).

4. If an image does not come quickly, move on to another student and return later. You might not get images for all students, but the images you do get will demonstrate that you can be creative.

Since that experience and many classes later, we now know that we all are cre- ative. Some people may produce metaphors in greater variety, at greater length, or of better quality than others, but we can all create! The possible variety of our creativity is almost infinite. If we are thinking with an active vocabulary of 6,000 words and if we could think a sentence a second for the rest of our lives, and even if those sen- tences were shorter than ten words each, we would not exhaust the number of pos- sible sentences. As we stretch our sentences longer than ten words, as we draw deeper from the million-plus words of the English language, and as we abbreviate, adum- brate, cut, and telescope English syntax, the variety increases to a staggering number.

Although creative thinking sometimes seems unlimited, we are absolutely bound by our brain and the language it contains, and we are partially bound by our personal barriers (see Chapter 2). The other mind bases that we have examined so fur-senses, memory, language, and feelings-operate as conditions of creativity. As those bases grow in firmness, flexibility, and interrelatedness, our creative potential rises.

Courage and calm help us to create. The opposite of courage, fear, can freeze our mind as surely as it can our body. When we worry about how our thoughts will be received, rejected, or ridiculed, we have difficulty thinking of new ideas. In times of fear, the traditional path seems the safe one. But if we can free ourselves of the fear of what others think about us and if we can strike strongly out on our own and

130 CHAPTER 7 • Creative Thinking

let the chips fall where they may, we will increase our creative fluency. One young medical researcher had his mentor berate him: "Damn it all, Salk! Why do you al- ways have to do things differently from the way other people do them?" Aren't we glad that Dr. Salk was different enough to discover a polio vaccination?

Humor also helps . Laughter relaxes. When we are relaxed we can more easily break out of structured thoughts and then reassemble them into new combinations. Playful thinking keeps us from getting fanatically focused on the seriousness of the issue: "There is a line of laughter in every serious thought" (Weber, 2000) . So fool around and have some fun with your creativity!

Brainstorming

Brainstorming allows the mind to flow from thought to thought, each idea stim- ulating other ideas. All evaluation or censorship of these ideas is suspended, thus helping the normal boundaries of thinking to dissolve, leading to more creative and unconventional thinking.

Research on brainstorming (Mullen, Johnson, and Salas, 1991) finds that it is more effectively done alone than with a group. Apparently, in a group situa- tion people are afraid that their novel ideas will be negatively evaluated by the group, even though instructions prohibit negativity. Also, one person's idea may impede the flow of ideas of the other members. This happens because each member in a group tends to think for a moment about the idea just presented which, not being their idea, tends to stop their own natural flow of ideas. There- fore, the group's efficiency will be greater if the members brainstorm alone and then return to the group with their solutions. The resulting larger number of ideas can then be evaluated by the group. If brainstorming were applied to the topic "Ways to Market This Product, " answers such as these might emerge:

Ways to Market This Product direct mail

TV ads

magazine ads

radio ads

telemarketing

retailing

multilevel marketing

hire a skywriter

door to door

giveaway promotion

take it to the schools

identifY the trade association

give it to certain leaders

go on talk shows

put up billboards

get the mothers involved

create a Web site

hang posters on cows

promotional balloons

get testimonials

Beginning to Create 131

Starbursting

Many difficulties come when you attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer.

-G. E. MOORE, PHILOSOPHER

Although brainstorming can generate many effective and creative ideas, it misses some of the larger parameters and assumptions that can come from a different method, which we call starbursting. Starbursting focuses on a topic and radiates outward with questions. Here anything goes, any questions are legitimate, and the more the better. Starbursting begins by asking, "What are the questions?" Let's apply starbursting to the same topic of marketing and then compare these results to those ofbrainstorming:

Marketing: What Are the Questions?

Why market this product instead of another? Do we want to market this product at all? Is now the best time? Why have we waited so long, and will we be faster next time? Do we want to get more into the marketing business? Will our company be stronger if we market this product? Is this the right country for this product? Why do humans market anyhow? Do we market to sell or service our customers? Who does marketing? What is today's technological marketplace? Is human conversation disappearing from the marketplace? Is marketing driven by greed? Will our customers like this? How globally appealing is this product? Would I buy this myself?

From this list we see that starbursting can generate some unexpected ques- tions. Although some of these questions are more philosophical than productive, many of them make sound business sense. Looking at our brainstorming and starbursting lists, which one contains more items that need to be considered early in the decision-making process? Which one contains more specific results? Judging from these lists, would it be wise to do starbursting or brainstorming first? These two creative tactics alone can generate enough work, fun, and ideas to free us whenever we feel closed or stifled.

Perhaps you are familiar with the Socratic teaching technique which uses questioning to lead a student toward a conclusion. This method presumes that the teacher knows the goal and that the student has enough knowledge to

132 CHAPTER 7 • Creative Thinking

process the questions. Unlike the Socratic method, starbursting does not use leading questions that probe toward a specific solution. Whereas the Socratic method may produce an answerer, starbursting may produce a questioner. The difference between starbursting and Socratic questioning, both in method and results, can be seen in two children walking the beach alongside a set of dog tracks. The first was Socratically asked, "What made these tracks?" and the an- swer was, ''A dog or an animal." The second child was asked the wider, starburst question, "What are the questions?" At first there was a puzzled look on the child's face, but after the question was repeated, the child looked around and be- gan asking questions: "Why do the waves come in closer here than over there? Why is the water greener over there? What made these (pointing to dog tracks)? Why are the tops of the waves white? What is this (pointing to kelp)? Why did they put this here (referring to a breakwater)?" Six questions! Instead of being Socratically led down one path, the second child's mind opened like a starburst. If continued through life, starbursting can produce a person who has learned to question, to probe.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Although only nineteen paintings survive, Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks showed an enormously creative and prolific thinker in action. True, his mind spawned more than his hands could build, but he captured these thoughts in writing and in sketches. Not since Archimedes has such a rest- less, questing mind asked so many questions and sought so many answers.

Perhaps creativity is slow because our confidence is weak. If creativity doesn't flow, we can give it a nudge. With the process below, we will probably find that we can coax creativity to come, even when we are in the doldrums of the mind.

Step 1: Desire

To become more creative, we must want it. "To change a mind-set may be the most difficult task a human being can undertake" (Hurt, 1998, p. 41). Most of us already would like to become more creative because it translates into more ideas, sometimes more money, and usually more fun out of life.

Coaxing Creativity 133

Step 2: Knowledge and Skills

We have seen that everyone has the capability to create. But to create in a spe- cific field we first need knowledge. If we decided to carve a stone sculpture and knew nothing about working with stone, we would not be successful on our early tries. Fortunately, to create in the field of thinking we mainly use language, and we already have sufficient language skills to create . As we read more books our vocabulary and knowledge base grow and our creative potential expands. More importantly, we are able to create-now.

Step 3: Edisonian Effort

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. -THOMAS EDISON

We hear so much about the spontaneous, serendipitous, heuristic, inspirational, and almost accidental aspect of creativity that it sometimes seems out of our control. The good news is that effort can cause creativity to happen. When Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravitation, he was said to have replied: "by thinking on it continuously." And as hard as Newton thought, Edi- son worked in his lab. He was known for his persistence; he asserted that there is no substitute for hard work. He tried over a thousand different filaments before he found one that burned bright enough and long enough to be used in his light bulb. Edison became rich through his "perspiration." Similarly, a study of 1,300 millionaires found hard work and creativity to be the major ingredients of their success ("Hard Work," 2000). Like Edison, we can apply our skills and begin to push, pull, bend, break, reverse, and spin them into newness. We can take the data and fiddle, fidget, and fool around with them until something new springs out. The activity below can help you to make creativity happen.

Prepcreation

1. Pick a topic that needs some creative work. 2. Write down three or four headings for important parts of that topic.

For instance, if you were going to design an innovative course of study for students, your headings might be:

Students Job Market Facilities Facu lty

(continued)

134 CHAPTER 7 • Creative Thinking

3. Make lists of anything that occurs to you under those topics. Keep each list in a column on a narrow piece of paper, or cut the columns out neatly so you can slide them up and down next to each other. Begin now by brainstorming a list under "Students," or the first topic you have selected .

4. Place a list of prepositions (such as these below) between any two of your lists, aligning the items in the three lists.

above about around after because before between beyond below beside down during from for in front of inside in into near next next to opposite outside out

5. Because prepositions show relationships, you can read possible rela- tionships between the elements you listed from left to right. For in- stance, taking the first column of prepositions and inserting them between two lists of subtopics, you might have a list like this:

Students above Job Market majors after starting job seniors between grad schools honor beside corporation

commuters from small business residents inside start a business failing near hot field bright opposite future field

_,

Reading the relationships across we get:

• Take students above job market (give them an overview). • Pick major after starting a job (work first. then decide which major

to follow). • Allow seniors between grad schools (perhaps allow the seniors to

do a joint graduate program at two close universities). • Take the honor students beside the corporation (in something like

a work-study program, perhaps honor students could work on parallel projects with a corporation).

• And so forth. (continued)

Coaxing Creativity 135

6. Shift one column so all the items slide up or down one notch. For in- stance, if the preposition column is moved one line up, we get "students after the job market" (survey or recruit students after they have been working a while). As you can begin to see, the number of combinations is enormous. Lists can be switched (left to right) and different lists in- serted. Also, we can see that not all combinations work, but if only a small percent of the combinations are successful, the process can still yield a huge number of creative ideas.

From this activity we again see that creativity is bringing the old together in new ways. It involves working the data, pushing it into another corner, turning it over, forcing it together into its critical mass, pulling it apart into new forms, and playing with it until it finds its creative form. There are other helps, such as the software Mindsights (Heindl, 2004) that offer multiple ways to manipulate data. These "automatic" programs can be helpful when we are dry, but we must still use our human· thinking ability to recognize the potential of what is before us.

Step 4: Fermentation and Insight

When creativity does not strike with lightning-like swiftness and our efforts still do not satisfY our needs, sometimes we have to give the process time or "sleep on it." Research from the University ofLuebeck found that more than twice as many sub- jects solved a hidden insight after they slept on it, than those who did not have the eight hours of sleep (Wagner et al., 2004). And we don't always have to literally sleep on it: When we are driving, sipping a soft drink, dreaming, or daydreaming (in an- other class, of course), our mind seems to sit with the idea and then, suddenly, as Einstein says, while we are eating an apple, the idea appears. After the desire, the ef- fort, and the fermentation comes the payoff: Insight! Solution! Discovery!

Step 5: Evaluation

As great as our idea may be, ultimately it needs to be shared and recognized, if not in our lifetime, then by later generations; otherwise it remains valuable and satisfYing only to ourselves. As in the fourth step of the scientific method, our ideas need to be validated; in this case, validation occurs through acceptance, through other ideas building on ours, and through the test of time. The test of time will be needed to validate an incredibly creative ideas. Alok Das is designing a "microsat" satellite that uses itself as fuel. To save weight, the honeycombed shell is filled with a hard fuel source such as Teflon, which can be converted to energy when the satellite is in space and a rigid shell is no longer needed. Will it work?

136 CHAPTER 7 • Creative Thinking

THINK ABOUT IT: Coax or coerce? We have called this section "Coaxing Creativity," yet under "Edison ian Effort" we have talked about making creativity happen. Is this similar to forcing creativity? If so, is force antithetical to creativity?

SUMMARY

We have looked at creativity as simply putting the old together in new ways; basically, it is a metaphorical process. Creativity is not confined to the Michelangelos; every- one can create, including ourselves. Hopefully, we have discovered through some of the activities presented that we too can create. We have seen how brainstorming and starbursting can boost creativity, and we have followed a five-step process to coax cre- ativity when the ideas do not readily appear. Sometimes our creativity can generate an astonishing amount of material, and creativity is involved continually in all areas of our thinking. In the next chapter we will learn to organize that information.

Creating Challenges

1. Describe the most creative persons you know. What are their personality characteristics, living styles, and creating methods?

2. List the subject areas in which you feel comfortable creating. How do you go about creating in these areas? Could you use some of those same processes to create in other areas like painting or writing?

3. We "coerced" creativity by placing lists of words next to each other and join- ing the words together. Can you find other ways to run ideas together?

4. Be creative and think of a new metaphor for the way the brain works. Some people think of the brain as having storage boxes or pigeonholes; one stu- dent described her brain as a bayou where ideas arose like steam. Write a passage beginning with, "My brain works like ... "

5. A "dynamic tranquility" in which we can relax but also remain alert is an ideal state for creativity. As we relax we can begin to disassociate our usual thoughts and let our mind roam freely. We can then assemble the parts of our wandering thoughts into new structures. There are a number of tech- niques for relaxing, but for the moment, try the way that works best for you and see if you can achieve a creative state. Then try to solve a problem or let your mind brainstorm a topic and notice the results.

6. Try brainstorming for a solution: Mary is divorced, thirty years old, mother of two sons, ages eleven and twelve. She lives in a three-bedroom apartment

Summary 137

in a large city. She works full~time at minimum wage and is in a desperate financial situation, unable to pay the rent, credit card bills, auto payments, insurance, and other usual living expenses. Using brainstorming, come up with as many suggestions as you can to ease Mary's financial problems.

7. Try starbursting by asking, "What are the questions?" Pick any idea, issue, or area in which you feel "stuck" and need some fresh ideas. Allow your mind to range freely and ask any kind of question at all. Then look at those questions and pick the ones you want to seek answers for.

8. The mnemonic device shown below is the result of creativity. We have named this device the "ELVES" to help us remember major points in this chapter. At any time in the thinking process when you find yourself stuck, remember the ELVES:

E-Be at ease. Relax. Creativity will flow more easily. L-Make lists. Starburst and brainstorm. V- ~ry those lists between prepositions: prepcreate. E-Eureka!Recognize and enjoy the insight. S-Select from your creations; test them on others.

Take an area in which you wish to generate ideas and try the ELVES steps above.

9. Create your own mnemonic device the next time you have to remember a list of items.

10. Because creativity always occurs in new and different ways, it is difficult to define; it's hard to classify something new with old labels. If you are interested in creativity, you may wish to take on the task of creatively defining it.

11. Michael Michalko suggests that, paradoxically, you can think more ere~ atively if you don't think about your subject: "When you consciously try to develop new ideas, those ideas are often heavily structured in predictable ways by your existing categories and concepts" (Michalko, 2000, p. 19). Can you think of ways to effectively "not think about it"?

12. Creativity can sometimes come from failures. Consider this advice from George Soros, a billionarie: "Often the deficiencies of a prevailing idea stimulate the emergence of another idea that may be considered its opposite" (Soros, 2004, p. 195).

13. Benjamin Franklin said that if everyone is thinking alike then no one is thinking. Can you think of examples of politicians, scientists, or students who are thinking alike?

14. "Opposite thinking" could save your life. When the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in 2004, people walked out to the beach to watch the water being sucked away. They appeared to be in no danger since the water was receding.

138 CHAPTER 7 • Creative Thinking

Most of those onlookers died as a huge wave returned at 500 miles per hour. So if you are standing on the beach and the water disappears, think opposite and run! There are other instances of doing the apparently "opposite" thing to save your life. Can you think of them?

15. Opposite thinking can also lead to creativity; for instance, move the drive train to the front of the car and you have front wheel drive, or buy stocks when they are going down. Make a list of standard things and actions, then have some fun trying to find "opposites."

16. As a more elaborate extension of the use of "opposites," there are other ways to get new perspectives and, as it were, "jolt" creativity. First, write down or select any problem, or object, and apply these creative changes to it, and see if new ideas appear:

• Change it. Change the time you do something, or the time something happens in a process; for instance, a remote for your car unlocks, flashes lights, and even starts your car before you get there . So change the time in the problem you are thinking about and imagine doing it far in ad- vance. Immediately. Before. Now. During. Along with. Intermittently. Until. Later. Much later. When. Never.

• Rearrange it. Move it. Up. Down. Sideways. On top. Under. In front of. Behind. Under. Inside. Outside. Backward. Angled. Supported. Spin- ning. Next to.

• Merge it. With another object. With many objects. With another person. Surround it. Circle it. Mix it. Join it. Merge only parr of it.

• Anthropomorphize it. Imagine it with human qualities. Let it think, talk to you. Feel what it is like to be it.

• Open it. The top. The bottom. A window. A slot. Show the inside. Add more inside. Unpeel. Show structure.

• Reverse it. Flip it. Start from the end. Send it in a new direction. Change its purpose.

• IntensifY it. Make it brighter. Whiter. Blacker. Different color. Louder. Heavier. Denser. Lighter.

• Negate it. Discard it. Choose another. Break it. Get a new one. Get an old one. Don't use any.

• Shape it. Taller. Wider. Thicker. Thinner. Grow it. Angle it. Deform it. Shrink it.

17. Was Aristotle correct when he said that "tl1ere is nothing new under the sun"? Can you think of new ideas and discoveries since the time of Aristotle, over 2,300 years ago? List them.

ORGANIZING

And what is 01ganization but the connection of parts in and for a whole.

-SAMUEL COLERI'DC£, L£CT!JRES

If we have just engaged in a prolific creative _;;:ocess, we may be overflowing with jumbled bits of data. If we could organize :...ese pieces, they might form a stunning mosaic. In this chapter we look at dif- ::rent ways to form that mosaic. If we can find basic orders that are in both the _'liverse and our minds, we can use those strong orders in our thinking. First,

look into the origins of order; then we consider the orders of place, time, -~ilarity, and cause; further, we look at some of the many logical orders that -umans have created; last, we apply a method of clustering, analyzing, and pri- -ritizing to some of the more important orders .

..: rhe universe orderly? Do we call it cosmos or chaos? Or is order only in our ::lind? Is our mind born with its own patterns of organization? Or does our mind .earn and reproduce patterns of order rhat it finds around it? Can our mind create :s own structures to fit its own needs?

139

140 CHAPTER 8 • Organizing

Some powerful thinkers tell us that our mind is not born blank. Plato says we have innate ideas, Kant says space and time are structures of the mind, Hume says that cause and effect are the mind's way of ordering reality, Jung says we have archetypes that we share with other humans, and Chomsky says the mind has the natural ability to learn language and to produce and recognize meaning. Although it would be difficult to verify what these innate structures are, the fact that the brain has general "territories" where certain data are stored and where certain processes take place suggests that there are innate structures. Our brain is prepared to receive and store sensory data, to retrieve that data, and then to process and interpret that data in a higher, symbolical manner oflanguage.

Much of the order within our mind seems to be learned from the natural order of the universe. We first look briefly at four natural orders that appear to be both in the universe and in our mind: topical order, analogical order, chronological order, and causal order. Later in this chapter we use these orders to help us organize our thinking.

Topical Order

In the universe most things have their "natural" place, or topical order. Water flows to its lowest level, lead sinks down, and helium balloons go up; planets whirl in orbit as they and the sun pull toward each other in direct proportion to their masses and inversely according to the square of their distances. Even human-made objects are subject to this topical order. Long after the Tower of Pisa leans over too far, the centered pyramids will stand. As we look around we see this topical order, or order of place in the universe.

Analogical Order

All around us we see similarities: between a ball and a planet, a flower and a tree, an apple and a cantaloupe, a mouse and a horse. The power of the mind to rec- ognize such similarities is the same metaphorical power that we discussed in the chapters on creativity and language. This analogical order of insights is found both in the world and in our mind.

Chronological Order

In the universe we observe change and we interpret it. We see day yield to night, planets wheel around the sun, flowers bloom and die, and our bodies grow and age. This change takes place through time; we see things changing in sequence and we call this order of time chronological.

Natural/Mental Orders 141

THINK ABOUT IT: What would our world be like without chrono- logical order? How safe would it be? Consider the chronological se- quence that pilots use before flying: preflight inspection, pre-ignition, ignition, running up the systems, pretakeoff, takeoff, climbing, cruising, descending, prelanding, landing, after landing, securing aircraft. Are we happy that pilots follow a strict chronological order? Are there situa- tions in which we should not follow a strict chronological order?

Causal Order

Behind these chronological changes we look for reasons. If we hear a loud bang in the next room, we presume someone or some force caused the noise. If a tree falls, we look for cuts, rot, shallow roots, wind, lightning, bulldozer tracks, or the giant pileated woodpecker. Even when we see seemingly chaotic patterns, we look for order. Eighty years ago a hurricane seemed like a disorganized mess of terrible winds and waves. Now with air and satellite reconnaissance we can spot the huge swirling vortex, understand the conditions of heat and cold that spawn and feed it, and somewhat predict its direction and duration.

Our experience (and perhaps matching structures in the brain) has taught us that all changes have reasons; when we find the reasons we call them causes, and the changes they produce, effects. We call this order causal.

Other Natural Orders?

When you look around, do you see any other natural ly occurring orders in the world that are not human constructs? For instance, is the Darwinian idea of survival of the fittest a natural order? Is the life form with the greater molecular complexity also higher on the food cha in? Can you identify any other orders?

The Order of the Elements

Dm itri Mendeleyev placed the elements in rows and columns accord ing to their atomic weights, creating what would come to be ca lled the periodic tab le. Presum ing an orderly un iverse, Mendeleyev pred icted that th is same

(continued)

142 CHAPTER 8 • Organizing

- ;~:~~::_·,',:'i~'~a~~ ',jji•7 ;~ ~{ '~, .,., .. ,~-·"·

THINKING ~~-~-~~<~~ f;td:},i'~c I ,~~.) 'itf0~ft ~~~_.ti:,4af~ ,Ji..~~LiJiri.U.~\M~-?I'. \I.S:•l-t". ~"""

pattern would continue and the missing elements would be discovered. Shortly thereafter, the three new elements gallium, germanium, and scan- dium were discovered. These elements fitted Mendeleyev's description and behaved exactly as predicted. Does the periodic table help to confirm the order in the universe? Which of the four orders do you think Mendeleyev used most? Did he use others?

The above four orders-topical, analogical, chronological, and causal-appear to be both natural and mental; they are found in nature and are reflected in our mind. Other orders that exist are mainly mental because they come largely from human structures. These mental orders can be arbitrary, such as an alphabetical seating arrangement, or they can be logical, as when we decide to store our valu- ables in different places according to their worth: Diamonds go in the safe- deposit box, large sums go into the bank, big bucks go under the mattress, daily living money goes in our dresser, spending money goes in our wallet or purse, and change lies loose on the counter. That's a logical order developed by corre- lating the perceived value of the item with the perceived safety of the location.

Thousands of mental orders have been developed by carpenters, philoso- phers, journalists, accountants, plumbers, lawyers, and so forth. These orders are not totally disconnected from the natural physical orders around us. For in- stance, when a plumber deals with gravity and permeability, the natural order is strongly in effect; but when the plumber applies new methods of connecting and cleaning, the mental orders of cost and reliability come more into play. And when the marketer deals with the four Ps-price, place, product, and promo- tion-the mental order predominates over the natural.

Some professions have produced logical orders that have excellent applications in other professions. For instance, the journalistic categories (the five Ws-who, what, where, when, and why) have broad applications for lawyers, teachers, writers, detectives, marketers, historians, and so forth. A brilliant professional lecturer who speaks ex tempore on many topics keeps his speech organized and complete by fol- lowing the five Ws in his mind. We too can use this organizational pattern often and effectively to think, write, and read. Journalists are trained to answer these five questions in their first paragraph. Knowing this, if we wish to read fast and get a news summary, we need to read only the lead paragraph of each article.

Another major order, the scientific order, or method, has multiple applica- tions in manufacturing, business, cooking, and indeed in most processes that

Mental Orders 143

work with empirical data. The four main steps of the scientific method are so in- tegral to thinking that we have treated each in a separate chapter: Observation cor- relates with our chapter on the senses, hypothesis with creativity, experimentation with action, and validation with evaluation.

Logic, with deductive and inductive reasoning as its supporting pillars, is also an order so important that we have set aside an entire chapter on logical thinking. Logical order is used continually in most fields of learning and work- ing. Although the premises change from field to field, we will see that this order of stating a premise, applying a particular, and then drawing a conclusion is basic to much of our thinking.

Planners often use a mental order that defines the objective, develops a plan to achieve that objective, monitors progress, and adjusts the plan.

Some mental orders are mainly arbitrary. Different societies have based their monetary standards upon seashells, copper, gold, or paper currency. Different languages make use of different symbols in their alphabets, such as the Roman or Chinese. For logical reasons we sometimes select an arbitrary order such as the alphabet or a number sequence, or decide the order by a flip of a coin.

Other Mental Orders

What are the orders relied upon by the following?

mechanics------------------- teachers------------------- manufacturers _________________ _ homeowners __________________ _

real estate agents ---------------- engineers ___________________ _

jewelers------------------- computer programmers-------------- students __________________ _ nurses _____________________________ _

journalists-------------------- scientists------------------ mathematicians----------------- marketers-------------------- Are any of these orders partially associated with the four natural

orders? Are any of these orders purely arbitrary?

144 CHAPTER 8 • Organizing

Besides the mental orders found in groups, individuals also have their par- terns. For example, suppose a pitcher has only three kinds of pitches. When does that pitcher tend to throw which pitch? In what quarter does an NBA All-Star usually score most of his points? Judging from the first test, what questions might the teacher ask on the second test?

Clarity and Memory

Because we have found order in the universe around us and have seen that we create it in society, we naturally expect to find it in our thinking. A structure in our mind makes sense of the universe, our solar system, the atom, our society, and even ourselves. What would our lives be like without a structure? Where would we arrive without a map? How would we assemble words without the patterns of language? Organizing the pieces makes sense of the puzzle. Organiz- ing gives clarity to our thoughts. Even as we write this book, we are struggling to give it an organizational format that offers clarity to the reader. Clarity is needed and valued in writing and speaking. It adds to the effectiveness of thinking and delivering our thoughts.

A clear structure also adds to the effectiveness of our memory. We are greatly aided by a clear thesis presented up front in a textbook, speech, or meeting, such as, "In this book we will cover three major topics." Having these major parts clearly distingtl!ished and related prepares our mind to store ideas in a related fashion, and to recall them when needed. Studies have shown that if we memo- rize nonsense data they quickly disappear without constant repetition, but if the data are organized and we understand what we are reading or thinking about, it is easier to bring them back to memory. The recognition and use of orders adds to our recall, efficiency, and clarity of thinking. Organize.

Think over the orders that were just presented. In your home life, work, and study, when do you use the predominantly natural orders: topical, chronologi- cal, analogical, and causal? When might you employ some of the major mental orders such as the scientific method and the five Ws? Can you identify any of your own patterns and orders that you have developed to keep track of things and ideas and to recall them and use them more efficiently?

1. Clustering

Clustering is simply grouping. For example, let's presume we have done star- bursting and brainstorming on the issue of gun control, and we are not sure about how to handle the following data that we have generated. The first step is

Steps In Organizing 145

to look at the items and see which ones are similar to each other, which items naturally belong together.

guns police gangs death handguns protection freedom the innocent rifles national defense control outlaw register types of gun permits place automatics statistics crime Bill of Rights drugs drive-bys sports hunting training license survey criminals fear stray bullets NRA urban/ rural

Place the above items in groups that seem to fit. What kind of clusters be- come apparent? If you experienced difficulty or spent more time clustering than you would like, here is one way to quickly cluster:

1. Look for similar items. 2. Give a general name to those similar items such as causes, people,

results, things. 3. Mark each item with a symbol for that cluster.

Following these three steps, you might label the clusters this way:

Instruments

S Solutions to deal with issue

C Causes, reasons

R Results

P People

I-guns !-handguns !-rifles $-register !-automatics C-drugs S-training C/R-fear

P-police C-protection C-national defense I-types of gun R-statistics R-drive-bys $-license I-stray bullets

R/C/P-gangs C/R-freedom $-control $-permits C/R-crime C-sports $-survey P/C/R-NRA

RIP-death RIP-the innocent $--outlaw S-place C-Bill of Rights C-hunting CIP IR-criminals ?-urban/rural

When these items are clustered according to the categories above, they form these groups:

Instruments Solutions Results Causes People guns register fear drugs police handguns training statistics fear gangs bullets license drive-bys hunting NRA automatics control gangs national defense death types of gun permits freedom gangs innocents

146 CHAPTER 8 • Organizing

Instruments Solutions stray bullets survey rifles outlaw

place criminals

2. Analyzing

Results crime NRA death innocents criminals

Causes freedom crime sports NRA Bill of Rights protection criminals

People criminals

After clustering, the second step is to analyze both the clusters and the indi- vidual items to determine whether we should omit any, add some new clus- ters, keep them as they are, or change them. These choices are made as we clarify our purpose in using these clusters . For instance, if we favor regulating the guns, we might want to add a new category "History" to show that the authors of the Bill of Rights were speaking of the rural landscape of pioneer days when guns were indeed necessary, but that now the urban landscape does not seem to justify guns. Or, if we do not favor regulation, we might omit the "Solutions" cluster because most of these items deal with some kind of regulation .

Once we have dealt with the larger question of which clusters to use, we can analyze the particular items. Perhaps we wish to remove "automatics" and "rifles" from the list of instruments and focus only on "handguns." Perhaps we want to add more results, such as cities or other countries that have tried gun control legislation, or correlations between various controls and death rates. Often we find that we need to do some research to fill in data that we need to present a full position.

Analyzing the Clusters

Try analyzing the clusters for the issue of gun control accord ing to your purpose. Are you for or against the ownership of guns? Are you against ownership of all types of guns or only handguns and automatic weapons? Do you want all guns or only certain types of guns to be registered. Do you wish to see ownership limited to certain people? Once you have clarified your purpose, think carefully through the clusters and the items, and add, subtract, and change them as necessary to support your purpose and give a fa ir presentation of the other position. Do you need to do any research to add to your knowledge?

Steps In Organizing 147

3. Prioritizing

Finally, we take the analyzed clusters and place them in an order; that is, we pri- oritize them. This is equivalent to roughing out an outline. For instance, how could we order the clusters above? Here are two possibilities:

1. People: Who uses guns? Who kills? Who gets killed? 2. Instruments: What kind of guns are we talking about? 3. Results: What are the guns used for (the problem)? 4. Causes: Why do people fear guns or want guns? 5. Solutions: What are possible ways to solve the problem?

1. Causes a. Instruments b. People

2. Results 3. Methods

What are some other possibilities? Can you come up with another organi- zation by changing the orders of the clusters? What determines the order? Can you see a relationship between the parts, a relationship that explains how that particular order coheres? Try to write out a "story" that links the parts together and demonstrates the prioritizing principle involved.

4. Organizing Your Space

The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one. - ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

A reseacher entered a bookstore and requested a book. The clerk said she did not know if they had it because the books were sorted by color! Such a pattern might be useful for those wishing to buy books for ornamental purposes, to create a showcase library of colorful leather, but it was useless to retrieve authors and titles. Can you imagine going into a library that is not organized?

Ergonomics-the efficient and healthy use of work space-has been a rep- utable study for at least twenty-five years. Now the term cognitive ergonomics has surfaced, and it means organizing your working space to help you think better. If you work at a desk, you know how smoothly ideas flow when you can easily find what you want. When you can't find something, there is probably some person doing work similar to you who will be able to find that information. Quite prob- ably that person does not have huge unsorted piles of material on his desk, but has the information neatly stored in organized systems that allow him to quickly retrieve it. In short, everything has its place. Haworth Furniture interviewed

148 CHAPTER 8 • Organizing

hundreds of office personnel and photographed their work spaces and concluded that people want a lot of their current project exposed to their sight. Conse- quently Haworth designs "three-layer trays, paper sorters, pile dividers, hold- everything boxes, goose necked stick on and grip clips, memory joggers, mini-tack and marker boards and wire bins" (Rowe, 2000, p. 31). Different people work better in different environments, and while we might not be able to acquire all the "cognitive ergonomic gizmos," we can design our work environment to max- imize our thinking productivity.

THINK ABOUT IT: If you have trouble organizing, take heart. Ben Franklin made "order" one of the virtues that he tried to achieve. He wrote: "Let all things have their places; let each part of your business have its time." However, he found order the most difficult to acquire. Although he failed to keep things in their proper places, the effort to do so made him "a better and a happier man" (Franklin, pp.105, 112). How much effort do you put into organizing?

5. Organizing Electronic Data

When we have a literal world of information from the Internet waiting to burst onto our screen, we need a system to control that data. But how can we manage a world of information? We can do so by managing our surfing, our search en- gines, and our sites. The popular image of surfing can help us understand and deal with the problem. A surfer must go with the wave and ride it where it's going. If the wave is breaking toward the south, the surfer cannot suddenly go north and head out to sea. Similarly "surfing" the net, clicking along the links, can lead you wherever the wave is going. And drifting along, what might you find? One nine- year-old boy has thirteen Web pages. Do you really want to spend a lot of time reading and citing from a nine-year-old? Nevertheless, some surfing is good, for you might find some treasures floating on the sea, but the time should be limited (5% of your searching time?). So set a time and enjoy your surfing.

Far more efficient than surfing is searching. Because the Internet contains billions of pages (a search on Google for "thinking electronic organization" found over four million Web pages, a sea of unstructured information), it is important to select your search engines wisely. Elie Wiesel offers this observation: "It is the questions asked, not the answers given, that distinguish the wise person from the fool" (Stopsky, 2000, p. 28). We will not name actual engines because their rat- ings fluctuate, but here are some guidelines to use in selecting them: accuracy, speed, and scope. For accuracy you can choose those engines that allow you

Steps In Organizing 149

to control your search with delimiters like [and], [ +], [or], [not], and[" . .. "]. A simple test for accuracy is to give the same search command to different engines and then see what the first ten items look like. Are they close to the topic you were seeking? A helpful accuracy item in an engine that offers you search refine- ment are words such as "Related Pages," or "Search for more documents like this one." The speed of the search engine is sometimes listed right at the top of the page in words such as: "this search took 1.2 seconds." Engines that list their speed are often fast. And finally, the scope of the search can be boosted by using one of the many "multiple" search engines which do just what their name im- plies-they use many engines at once, and then integrate the results. As you find the engines that yield the best accuracy, speed, and scope, then "bookmark" or "favorite place" them.

"The problem for students today is not how to find the information, it's how to evaluate the information they do find," says Nicholas Burckel, dean of libraries for Marquette University (Scobey-Polacheck, 2003, p. 13). One of the best means to ensure that you find solid information is to search those electronic indexes that carry scholarly or reputable periodicals and journals. Many libraries now have home pages that access these indexes. One particu- larly helpful site is EBSCOhost, which contains many of these indexes, ab- stracts, and full articles. There, at a touch of your fingers, you have full text articles from reputable periodicals on the topic you have selected. Other solid sites can often be identified by the last three letters before the dot, with ".edu" and ".gov" leading to particularly valuable and usually trustworthy: in- formation. If you see an ".edu" with a university name somewhere in the In- ternet address, and the articles tend to have "Ph.D." behind them, you are probably reading reliable data. Again, when you find a solid site, "bookmark" or "favorite place" it.

After we have managed the time we spend surfing, the efficiency of the search engines we use, and the quality of the sites we visit, we need to manage the way we store the data. Rather than print out all the relevant data we find, it is often effective to create folders for the topical areas we are researching and then save the entire file or "copy;paste" part of the file into those folders. Like our file cases of old (which do not yet seem to be shrinking in number), we need our electronic storage to be orderly so we can easily retrieve what we have stored. So before you create your folders, think through your organiza- tio nal scheme. And as we saw in our chapter on memory and the brain, the pri mary ingredient in recalling is how well we stored the original memory. Increasingly, electronic storage is becoming our external memory. As Moore's Law" continues to shrink the size of the memory chips in our cell

phones, iPods, and flash sticks, it becomes crucial to store that data well so we can "recall" it.

150 CHAPTER 8 • Organizing

Now that we have a method to sort, select, and organize our ideas, let's apply this method to some of the natural and mental orders we discussed at the beginning of this chapter. For instance, look at this outline:

1. Causes a. Instruments b. People

2. Results 3. Solutions

We can see that the outline has a causal order. The cause and effect are clear; the people and instruments are the causes and the results are the effects.

We use the chronological order when we want to tell what happened. If we want to tell the history of gun ownership or describe some incidents that occurred with or without guns, the chronological order fits fine. It is perhaps the earliest of the orders, for it tells a story. Much of the first recorded literature of ancient cul- tures (such as Gilgamesh and the Homeric poems) is in epic form, which is often a narrative describing the origin of the world and the human race. If we imagine a scene far earlier than the advent of writing, we can picture our ancestors around a fire telling a story of the hunt, of their injuries and the one that got away.

We use the chronological order often. Journalists, news broadcasters, and news magazine publishers live on it; investigators and prosecuting attorneys link guilt and innocence to it; researchers, archivists, and historians build their repu- tations on it; writers of business reports, how-to manuals, and economic fore- casts make money from it; geologists, paleontologists, and archeologists rigorously search for it; and we-teachers and students-use it constantly. We use it when we answer questions such as, Where did you go? What did you do on your trip? What were the last three jobs you held? What schools did you go to? What are your plans?

Aristotle said everything has a beginning, middle, and end. Those basic, chronological parts fit the megastructure of most writings which have an intro- duction, body, and conclusion, but we do not always begin with the beginning. Movies frequently make use of flashbacks, and the epic writers as well as modern novelists often start in medias res, in the middle of the action. Often in our thinking we see the core of the idea and even the end before the beginning; as Pascal notes, "The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first" (Trotter, 1958, p. 7). In our writing this principle works well: Write it first and then introduce what was written. Often our brilliant introduction comes to mind while we are writing the body of our discourse.

Using the Orders 151

Our organizing method of clustering, analyzing, and prioritizing works quite simply with chronological order: Stringing the data along a time line auto- matically clusters and prioritizes them. Our main thinking task then is to decide what to include and what to omit. We can turn to the chronological order often and with confidence because it is both a natural and a mental order, and it fits easily and naturally into what we already do well.

Analogical order, being both a natural and a mental structure, has a com- pelling power. We have looked at the force of analogies in the chapters on lan- guage and creativity and briefly at the beginning of this chapter. The first step of our organizing method, clustering, fits naturally with analogies. The process of clustering, or grouping similarities, uses the same insight contained in analogies: seeing likenesses. Likewise, the final step, prioritizing, superimposes an analogical structure upon the clusters; to do so, we have to call upon our creativity and mix ideas together until we see the new structure. For instance, Aristotle's beginning, middle, and end as the three parts of a discourse (intro- duction, body, conclusion) are analogous to a hook, arrow, and anchor. The hook, or the introduction, catches the attention of the audience, then the arrow delivers the message to the target audience, and finally the anchor firmly fixes the conclusion in the mind. A hook, arrow, and anchor is a powerful, analogical, memorable packaging of the chronologically first, second, and third.

Analogical structures have exerted power through the ages. Our youth and old age have been compared to spring and winter, to a sunrise and sunset; and the totality of our life has been compared to a five-act play. Here's how two students used forest analogies to animate and structure their writings:

I ran into the woods to chase her out of my mind. The last shimmering light glowed off the yellow, fall leaves. The landscape was intoxicating like a fine brandy. I sat silently, wandering the dark corridors of inner consciousness, re- flecting on our past three years. The memories of her hung heavily on my heart. I sifted through them one last time, returned them to the dark corridors, and walked from the woods free.

* * * They had surrounded us. Tall silent wooden sentinels, protecting what was left of their world. They pointed their long bony broken fingers at everyone. And the wind cried for them.

Their beautiful uniforms of green, gold, and orange, forever gone. No longer admired for their beauty, they hung their limbs in shame. No mask can hide the reality of their detestation. And the wind cried for them.

The scorched earth pulled away from their feet, adding to their indignity. Their hold on life was gone. We looked, and shook our heads. And the wind cried for us all.

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A structure built on an analogy will work for most communication situa- tions. It is often worth our time to find a central analogy that fits the audience and then develop it. We can call such an analogy a "seminal structural analogy." This seedling analogy will grow a clear structure as we write, much like the acorn contains the DNA of the oak. Here is an example of the structuring power of a seminal analogy. Given the tide, "My Emotional Mansion," a student wrote:

You can drive by my emotional mansion but I'm sorry, you can't come in today. My walls are built of sturdy brick that stand too tall to get in or around. I have too much fear so I built these walls for my protection. What's inside that I want to hide? My fears, anger, and trust.

My fears are in the first room as you would walk in, if only I would let you. The room is filled with sadness. Pictures of children with sadness in their hearts. A lost puppy, curled tightly in a corner of the room. Gloom in the air, no sunlight is allowed in here.

If you were to have walked through the hall you would see a room set off to the right. It's locked most of the time for everyone's protection. That is my anger room. Many times of the day you can feel explosions vibrate through this room. No windows or lights needed. The flames from the burning pit are set in the middle of the room. Pots, pans, glasses, plates, books, all fly through the air from one side of the room to another. We will not go in there right now. You just might get hurt.

There is one more room. It's around the corner, down the hall, and to the left. This room has double glass windows with bars crossing the front. Three locks protect this room. Everything in it is locked and chained down. My fur- niture, my lights, and even a drinking glass has a chain around it. It's my trust room. As you can see I really trust everyone with all my possessions in this wonderful room of mine. I don't spend much time in here because I don't have to worry when no one else is here.

I did once have a happy room. It's somewhere here in my mansion but I guess I lost it. I remember that at one time I did spend a lot of time in there, but it's so long ago, I forgot where it's at and what it looks like.

So as I said, I'm sorry, you can't come in today.

This piece was written ex tempore in class in about ten minutes. It flowed out spontaneously in this form with only a few (corrected) misspellings. The writer produced it easily because the central analogy between the inner self and private house provided an appropriate structure. This house analogy taps the essential power of language and provides structural clarity and originality, and the emo- tions add an honest personal tone.

The effectiveness of analogical order is clear. It helps us to understand simi- larities and the differences. It draws on the analogical power existing in nature, which is reflected in our language and perhaps in the function of our mind, and it communicates forcefully.

Using the Orders 153

Creating a Seminal Structural Analogy

If you want to try your response to the title "My Emotional Mansion" (which is almost guara nteed to produce great pape rs), beg in by writing the open ing li ne "Welcome to my emotional mansion. " Then develop a different emotion in each room; for instance, the attic cou ld be your th ink- ing or private room, the basement your anger room , a locked closet your fear room , and so forth. On a blank piece of paper, beg in writing rather rapidly without worrying about how the words come out.

Topical order works well with description. It too was probably developed prehistorically. We can again imagine our ancestors returning from a forage and describing some trees with huge globes of fruit that they found in a valley by a stream four hills away. Topical order aids description because objects and places have physical dimension. In describing an object or place we might move from top to bottom, right to left, north to south, little to big, and so forth. Topical or~ ders are used by architects, surveyors, sculptors, astronomers, geologists, farm~ ers, engineers, mechanics, bus drivers, community developers, truck drivers, and many others.

Students also use topical order when they wish to describe. Here is a stu~ dent's descriptive paper that uses the topical method (along with some brilliant analogies). The topical order can be seen in the first two paragraphs.

Curtain Call Over the lake the lightning was dancing across the black horizon. Sometimes it was just a quick little jig, other times it was a delicate waltz. It started at the northern end of the sky and jitterbugged its way toward center stage.

The rain stopped, but a heavy curtain of clouds still hung over the inky water. Bolts of electricity still flashed beyond the thunderheads.

Who had choreographed this brilliant display of power? Why had I gotten front row seats? Who else was in the audience, and were they also longing to leap out of their seats for a standing ovation?

A tribute was due, but to whom?

As with the other orders, we can apply the process of clustering, analyzing, and prioritizing to the topical order. If we are attempting to describe, say, a Colorado mountain campsite, we might cluster our list of details into trees, camping equipment, rocks, lakes and streams, mountain peaks, glaciers. We would then analyze what we wished to keep, add, delete, or change. Then we would prioritize our list, perhaps arranging the details of the scene from top to

154 CHAPTER 8 • Organizing

bottom: the mountain peaks, the snow, the rocks, the timber, the lakes and streams, our campsite, and our tent.

Like chronological order, topical order is fundamental; both time and space (place) are basic constructs of the world, of science, and of our thinking. Ar- ranging things, ideas, and words in an orderly fashion allows our thinking to progress solidly and clearly.

SUMMARY

Some people find working with details and exact placement of parts exhilarat- ing. Others find the task of organizing rather boring. For both of these groups this look at organizing our thinking can add satisfaction and excitement. We have searched for and found basic organizational patterns in the universe as well as in our mind. These strong orders are the chronological, analogical, causal, and topical. We have looked at these orders and have stressed choosing one of them rather than an arbitrary order whenever possible. We have also seen that there are powerful mental orders such as the scientific method and the five Ws of jour- nalists; additionally, many other orders operate in specific professions. Finally, to deal with the data generated, we can apply our organizing method and cluster, analyze, and prioritize.

Organizing Challenges

1. What orders are found in the following?

a formal speech a dictionary a library an encyclopedia a science textbook

2. What kind of orders are found in a business that uses these items? card files databases spreadsheets sales reports

3. Do you think your mind is born with organizing structures, or do you dis- cover them, learn them, or create them?

4. How would you organize these items: lion cub, animal, horse, lion, wolf, cow, calf? Why? What were your principles of organization? How did you find those principles? Is another organization possible?

Summary 155

5. Can you develop other seminal structural analogies? Try substituting other words for "mansion" in "My Emotional Mansion." Then substituting words for "emotional." Try to develop one in your major field of study.

6. Why are the journalistic categories-who, what, where, when, and why- so useful? Could you use this pattern to organize a paper you might want to write?

7. Take two or three occupations you are interested in and try to identify some of the logical orders that operate within them.

8. Do any of the logical orders from one professional field also work in any other field? Can you identify the most useful orders or the master models?

9. What is the order of geometry? 10. When historians ask questions about an author's sources, dates, authentic-

ity, and motives, what kind of orders are they using? 11. What is the major organizational principle for marketing? 12. When a real estate agent tries to price a house, what is the order behind the

pricing? 13. What books do you know that are well organized? You might want to look

at books by Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman as two thinkers who present their ideas with optimum structural clarity.

14. How do you use some of the basic orders in your life? Think about how you arrange your house, your work space, or your study area.

15. Are there domestic orders? In our dresser, where is that other sock? 16. As greater amounts of information are instantly retrievable, has our concen-

tration weakened and our thinking been spread roo thin? What do you think has been the impact of the information revolution?

17. Larry Page, a cofounder of Google, said "we're trying to measure what the Web thinks" (Thottam, 2001, p. 34). What might this provocative state- ment mean?

18. We have stated that there is a causal order. The theory of chaos has received a great deal of attention in the sciences (see Chaos by James Gleick) and in a different form in the business world (see Thriving on Chaos by Tom Peters). Do some formal research in this area, or analyze your own experience. Do you experience chaos in the world around you? Is chaos contradictory to order?