The Style

I would like to say a few more words about the process of thinking now. When ever a question is posed to someone regarding anything then there are two possible ways of thinking regarding that question. One way is thinking how to reply about what could be the solution of the given question. This I will call as linear thinking since thinking is done only in the domain of thinking about what could be the solution and it is directly related to the question. Although this will suffice for most of the questions (problems) we say in life but it is not sufficient for one to become a philosopher or a scientist in any field and to find solutions to some questions. For that purpose there is another kind of thinking while trying to answer a question, which I call higher order thinking. In this the thinking is not focused on giving the answer directly and any attempt to answer the question is secondary or concurrent in this process. (Focus can be treated as a relation from the domain of thinking to the object of thinking) ¹ Unlike linear thinking, in which focus is on answering the question only (can be treated as range of focus), in higher order thinking there are many aspects in the range of focus on which our focus can be directed. A few such aspects are

1. Trying to expand the scope of the issue under consideration.

2. Working backwards that means we first try to find required concepts that are necessary to answer the question and try to elaborate them.

3. Generalization of concepts.

4. Defining and formulating concepts etc.

5. Successive approximation.

Anyhow the list here is not exhaustive since I myself not yet discovered all forms of higher order thinking but one thing is certain that is if we follow higher order thinking we end up in achieving much more than anticipated.

[Contunued ... ]