A synopsis in thought

Once upon a time, when I attended

a certain college before the

regular age of enrollment, I sat

in the seat of learning in an

English class. My professor

was, as they say, "open-minded"

and accepted any well thought

writing with glee. I wrote many

papers for him (each receiving

perfect, or nearly so) and one

such was a basic approach to

thought. How do people think?

Why do people think the way they do?

Are there unique thought processes?

Etc.

I avoided in large the worldview

aspect of thought (though extremely

important, and in the end decisive

to WHY people think the way they do)

because I was focusing on the mode

of thinking,not the reason.

To get to the point, I divided

all of humanity into groups of people

who share the same mode of thinking.


1.) Those who perceive the world

visually. Not just perception, for

information is taken in by a vast

majority of the population in this

manner, but rather those who more

easily visualize a concept.

For example, those who think in

pictures when attempting to find

a definition to a word and then

describe the word by the picture.

Some of the greatest mathematicians

have been visual thinkers (Euclid

for one, after all he did more or

less invent geometry). But artists

also tend to see things visually,

the ability to manipulate shape in

one's mind is a creatively inspired

trait.


2.) Those who perceive the world

through sound. This set is actually

rather rare, there are few who define

their world by what they hear.

Por exemplo, say you were attempting

to remember how a song's tune goes.

You probably hum what you can

remember or say the words you know

to the song, you are trying to

replicate the song so that it jogs

your memory better. If you turned

this process on its head you would

come up with a sound thinker, one

who instead of using the sound as

the medium between a different mode

of thinking and the end result would

probably remember the song better

and quicker because they are

photographically inclined.


3.) Text based thinking. If you were

an evolutionist you would quibble

that text based thinking should be

rare as writing is too recent an

edition to the human experience.

You would be wrong. Text based

thinking is not rare, but it's not

common either. For the "texter" the

process of cognition is more likened

to either a long line of associations

or a direct logical line.

Strangely, the books of my research

did say that phonographic memory

and sound based thinking were

related, but that texters and

photographic memory were not

necessarily related.


4.) Now, you may be wondering are

there taste thinkers and touch

thinkers? If there are then they

are so rare that my research did

not uncover them. However there is

a fourth category, I call the

blind thinker. So far the mode is

more or less based on one of the

five senses, two in sight and one

in sound. These abilities have one

thing in common, they both can

perceive communication.

I think this is a key to understanding

why we think the way we do, in order

to better communicate. But the blind

thinker may or may not have

communication as his main objective.

For he may ponder on an issue without

actually consciously processing his

thought in one of the more

recognizable modes. And once the

thought has reached the pinnacle of

its discovery then it is translated

from the subconscience to the conscience

using a more or less random mode.


Most people can identify with one

of these modes, but almost everyone

has used each of them at one time

or another. I find that if I ranked

myself on the modes that occured

most often would be thus,

1.) Sound, 2.) blind,

3.) shape, 4.) text.

Sound I use most often (or at

least I remember using it most often)

but I use sound as one might use text.

2nd place was only slightly in

favor of blind because I have a

strong bent towards shape

manipulation but I have to try to

think about shapes, I don't have

to try to blind think. Text just

seems too much like my use of

sound for me to bother, and its

hard to think that way for me.


Dt