Thinking and learning to think by Nathan C. Schaeffer (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📖
- Author: Nathan C. Schaeffer
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It will be readily admitted that often our thinking is so loose and disjointed that its component parts resemble the liquid more than the chain, whereas our best thinking—namely, that which leads to a goal in the shape of a trustworthy conclusion—resembles a train of cars in which motive power is derived not from steam, but from a conscious expenditure of will-power. The teacher may perform the triple function of fireman, engineer, and switch-tender, supplying the fuel for the process, regulating the speed, and directing it along the lines of track which lead to the desired goal. It is as natural for a pupil to think as it is for a stream to flow towards the ocean. The stream may run shallow if no supply of water is received from the outside. It is the mission of the teacher to keep up the supply, to remove as far as possible the obstructions which are likely to throw the current of thought into unexpected channels. It is a peculiarity of this current of thinking that it is cognitive, or possesses the function of knowing. Human thought resembles the stream in seemingly taking up and carrying what was not a part of itself. Just as the stream of water carries minerals in solution as well as silt, sand, pebbles, and even heavier objects, so the stream of thought appears to lay hold of objects and to carry them as part of itself. Here, however, the strings of the analogy break. The stream of thought is in the mind; the objects with which it deals are outside of the mind. Mental pictures of these objects float in the stream of thought as objects on the bank of a river are mirrored in its waters; yet the parallel is not complete, because the mind may turn the eye upon itself and make what is thus seen the object of thought. This turning upon itself may be likened to eddies in the stream. But even when the mind thus turns back upon itself and views its own states and activities, these are regarded as objective, as related to the thinking process very much like the objects of knowledge in the external world.
Another important phase of thinking finds no likeness in any of the figures of speech above referred to. The mind meets certain objects of thought on which it seems to tarry or fasten itself. This has led some writers to deny that the stream of thought is a continuous current. This view causes undue stress to be laid upon the material of thought, and leads the teacher to undervalue his function as directing guide in teaching pupils to think. Even Professor Bain claims that,—
“The stream of thought is not a continuous current, but a series of distinct ideas, more or less rapid in their succession, the rapidity being measurable by the number that pass through the mind in a given time. Mental excitement is constantly judged of by this test; and if we choose to count and time the thoughts as they succeed one another, we could give so much more precision to the estimate.”[32]
These transitions should not be confounded with the relations between objects of thought or between objects in the external world. The relations may be part of the thought of that which is perceived or known, or they may be made distinct ideas or thoughts. The important phase under consideration is the passage of the mind from one idea or thought to another. Such transitions are quite as important and quite as much a part of the current of thought as the premises and conclusions on which the mind seems to rest. These two phases of the thought-process may be likened to the perching and the flight of a bird. This figure of speech is used by Professor James, among whose services to the profession of teaching it is not the least that he has called attention to the importance of these transitions in the stream of consciousness. His account is so lucid and satisfactory that one cannot forbear to quote his words at some length. Referring to the stream of thought, he says,—
“Like a bird’s life, it seems to be made up of an alternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of language expresses this, where every thought is expressed in a sentence and every sentence closed by a period. The resting-places are usually occupied by sensorial imaginations of some sort, whose peculiarity is that they can be held before the mind for an indefinite time and contemplated without changing; the places of flight are filled with thoughts of relations, static or dynamic, that for the most part obtain between the matters contemplated in the periods of comparative rest. Let us call the halting-places the ‘substantive’ parts and the places of flight the ‘transitive’ parts of the stream of thought. It then appears that the main need of our thinking is at all times the attainment of some other substantive part than the one from which we have just been dislodged. And we may say that the main use of the transitive parts is to lead us from one substantive conclusion to another. Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the transitive parts for what they really are. If they are but flights to a conclusion, stopping them to look at them before a conclusion is reached is really annihilating them. Whilst if we wait until the conclusion be reached, it so exceeds them in vigor and stability that it quite eclipses and swallows them up in its glare. Let any one try to cut a thought in the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation of the transitive tract is. The rush of the thought is so headlong that it almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it. Or if our purpose is nimble enough and we do arrest it, it ceases forthwith to be itself. As a snow-flake crystal caught in the warm hand is no longer a crystal, but a drop, so, instead of catching the feeling of relation moving to its term, we find we have caught some substantive thing, usually the last word we were pronouncing, statistically taken, and with its function, tendency, and particular meaning in the sentence quite evaporated. The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is, in fact, like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see the darkness. And the challenge to produce these psychoses, which is sure to be thrown by doubting psychologists at any one who contends for their existence, is as unfair as Zeno’s treatment of the advocates of motion, when, asking them to point out in what place an arrow is when it moves, he argues the falsity of their thesis from their inability to make to so preposterous a question an immediate reply.”[33]
The science of logic deals almost altogether with the halting-places, with the substantive parts, with the ideas, notions, concepts that are to be compared, and with the resulting judgments, inferences, and conclusions. Whether the teacher has studied the science of logic or not, it is to these he devotes his chief attention; they can be analyzed, defined, and clearly fixed as thought-products or knowledge. Defects in the thinking-process are apt to show themselves here; at least, they furnish tangible data for criticism, corrections, and reviews. These thought-products on which the mind loves to linger are denoted by nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs,—the parts of speech which constitute the bulk of the vocabulary of every language. The movements of the mind from one object of thought to another are indicated by conjunctions and other connectives. Thinkers are often known by their favorite connective words and phrases. Pupils catch these from the phraseology of their teachers, or pick them up unconsciously from the books they read. Some languages are richer in such connective words and phrases than others; the mind carries away some influence in the way of making these transitions in thought from every language which it studies; its thinking is moulded by the language which it masters. Logic has very little to say about these transitions for which one language sometimes supplies words and expressions altogether wanting in another. Frequently we grow conscious of them through the feeling of a gap to be filled, or of a chasm to be leaped over, or of an obstacle to be cleared away, or of something that obstructs our thinking and hinders it from reaching the goal. Here again one cannot refrain from quoting Professor James, although his words do not indicate that he fully realizes the value for elementary instruction of what he has written. Here are his words:
“The truth is that large tracts of human speech are nothing but signs of direction in thought, of which direction we, nevertheless, have an acutely discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever. Sensorial images are stable psychic facts; we can hold them still, and look at them as long as we like. These bare images of logical movements, on the contrary, are psychic transitions, always on the wing, so to speak, and not to be glimpsed except in flight. Their function is to lead from one set of images to another. As they pass, we feel both the waxing and the waning images in a way quite different from the way of their full presence. If we try to hold fast the feeling of direction, the full presence comes, and the feeling of direction is lost. The blank verbal scheme of logical movement gives us the fleeting sense of the movement as we read it, quite as well as does a rational sentence awakening definite imaginations by its words.”[34]
Right here the teacher who is an artist finds the opportunity for the display of his highest skill. It is his privilege to direct the flights and the perchings of the youthful mind. He can shape the thoughts and their sequence. He can cause the
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