notebooks of the mind explorations of thinking jan 1997

[...]... with the beginnings of a framework for this endeavor Each of these psychologists has addressed boldly the exploration of the mind And although their work and their ideas differ in many ways, they have in common their opposition to the widely held belief within psychology that the study of the mind is beyond the resources of twentieth century science Their view stresses the processes of thinking rather... Pensie (Thought): the face is soft, the eyes are luminous, the brow is clear The difference in the scale and the power of these two figures captures well the relative importance assigned to men and women in the traditional literature of the intellect, and the odd separation of "The Thinker" and the "Thought." Notebooks of the Mind attempts to overcome this legacy of the traditional view of thought as a... compositions are the end-products of the multiple transformations of thought These very forms of externalized thinking also constitute the basis of internal thought The full interplay of these external and internal processes of thought has not been explored in the past; their interaction constitutes one of the major themes of this work "The Creativity of Thinking" is the last chapter -of this book, where... possibilities of the mind But our knowledge of thinking is still limited While we are awed by the accomplishments of the gifted in the arts and sciences, our study of thought has largely ignored them The basic assumption that governs this work is that a powerful resource for the understanding of thinking is provided by the self-knowledge of the creative individuals among us 1 2 / NOTEBOOKS OF THE MIND The diverse... processes of artists, scientists, philosophers, and historians are gathered and analyzed in these pages Their thoughts on thinking were elicited in the course of more than a hundred interviews Beside these conversations, the reading of letters, journals, biographies and autobiographies, as well as works in progress, have formed the basis of this study of the notebooks of the mind In the past, these promising... the painter, described the dialectics of creativity as "the long artistic tug -of- war between idea and image." It is this tension between idea and its realization, between an individual's "network of enterprises" (Howard Gruber's term) and the limitations of a single work—a tension which propels much of thinking that became the new focus of Notebooks of the Mind The Languages of Thought A new work of. .. full of surprises and unexpected turns of thought All of these conversations included several themes: the earliest developments of the person's interests; the nature of his or her training and apprenticeships; the shaping of "invisible tools"—that is, their craft and creative intensity; some descriptions of daily routines; the biography of a recent work and reports of collaborative endeavors There... "notebooks of the mind. " Some of them were later expanded and refined into accomplished works At the first publication of this book, my expansion of Vygotskian theory met with bafflement from some colleagues The pluralistic stance in this book, concerning diverse languages of the mind, was disturbing to their interpretations of Vygotsky's position about the primacy of language in thought I understood their... serenity amid the cruelties of daily life.2 Powerful common themes emerged from the words of these one hundred very different creative individuals Their voices contributed to the shape of this book They also made me see that no single exploration can answer a question as ever-present and intriguing as the nature of creativity Since Notebooks of the Mind was first published in 1985, thinking about thinking. .. and productive thinkers These individuals devote many 4 / NOTEBOOKS OF THE MIND hours each day to intellectual labor, the success of which is dependent upon their self-knowledge Their insights are of great value in illuminating the largely hidden processes of the mind In this inquiry, experienced thinkers have been asked to address some of the issues raised by the many students of thought: How do human . how human beings at the edge of xiv / NOTEBOOKS OF THE MIND danger could find freedom in the life of the mind remained unsatisfied. Yet I couldn't escape the positivist model. psy- chology into the discussion of creative work. By the same token, we can see how workers in these branches of knowledge can learn from read- ing the notebooks of the mind. In "One . discussed ideas with me. Many of them are listed in the back of this book among the names of those interviewed. The staff of the University of New Mexico press has been supportive and