Part 2

I believe Miss Wilcox exaggerates matters. Incidentally I for one do not pretend to have discovered anything revolutionary. But the importance of the subject warrants its formulation into as near scientific form as we can bring it.

I beg no one to get frightened. Science does not necessarily mean test tubes and telescopes. I mean science in its broadest sense; and in this sense it means nothing more than organized knowledge. If we are to find rules and methods of procedure, these methods must come from somewhere—must be based on certain principles—and these principles can come only from close, systematic investigation.

It may indeed be urged that we can think best by disregarding all “rules,” by not paying any attention to method. But the man who maintains this must give reasons; and once he attempts this he himself is bordering closely on the science of the matter. In short, the settlement of even this question is part of the science of thinking.

And what is to be the nature of this science?

For our purposes, all sciences may be divided into two kinds: positive and normative. A positive science investigates the nature of things as they are. It deals simply with matters of fact. Such a science is physics, chemistry, psychology. A normative science is one which studies things as they ought to be. As the name implies, it seeks to establish a norm or pattern which ought to be adhered to. It studies means of reaching desired ends. To this class belong such sciences as ethics, education, agriculture.

Now these normative sciences, with the exception of ethics, are nearly always referred to either as “arts” or “applied sciences.” To both of these terms I technically but strenuously object. I object to the term “art” to designate any set of organized rules for doing a thing, because “art” also means the actual doing of that thing. And this thing may be done, and often is done, in total ignorance of the rules governing it. A man may possess the art of swimming—he may be able to swim—without any previous instruction, without any knowledge of how he ought to hold his body, arms and legs; just as a dog may do the same thing.

I object also to the term “applied science,” because to me this term implies that the science it refers to is based on one positive science only. I can think of no so-called applied science which is so based. Hygiene, not alone dependent on physiology, must derive some of its rules from the chemistry of foods, as well as from the sciences of sanitation and ventilation, themselves normative. Agriculture is based not only on biology and botany, but on chemistry and meteorology.

The science of thinking, then, if such a science there be, is normative. Its purpose is to find those methods which will help us to think constructively and correctly.

One more distinction and our preliminaries are over. There are two other sciences with which the science of thinking is liable to become confused; one positive, the other normative.

The positive science is that branch of psychology which deals with the reasoning process and examines the basis of belief. We shall make frequent use of this science in trying to find rules for thinking, but it will not be the only science we shall use, nor will that science be the subject of this book.

The normative science with which the science of thinking may become confused is logic. Indeed, logic has sometimes been called the science of thinking. Now for our purposes logic is a part of the science of thinking, but it is not the part which we are primarily to consider. Its function is merely negative; it consists in leading us from error. The part of the science of thinking in which we are interested deals with those positive rules which will help to make us creative thinkers. . . .

Our ship is headed for the port Truth. Our mind is the engine, the science of thinking the propeller, and logic the rudder. Without our engine, the mind, the propeller of the science of thinking, which transforms our mental energy most effectively into motion, would be useless. Without the propeller, which gives motion, the rudder of logic would be useless. But all three are needed to reach our goal.

* * * * *

And now I must bespeak a little patience. The next chapter, and the one following it, are going to deal very largely with method and methods. They will touch on classification, and a lot of other things to which the plain man has an aversion; to which, at least, he usually evinces no very active interest. But it is necessary to consider these things in order to make our study complete.

THINKING WITH METHOD

Most of us, at those rare intervals when we think at all, do so in a slipshod sort of way. If we come across a mental difficulty we try to get rid of it in almost any kind of hit or miss manner. Even those few of us who think occasionally for the mere sake of thinking, generally do so without regard for method—indeed, are often unconscious that method could be applied to our thought. But what is meant by method? I may best explain by an example.

From somewhere or other, a man gets hold of the idea that the proper subjects are not being taught in our schools and colleges. He asks himself what the proper subjects would be. He considers how useless his knowledge of Greek and Latin has been. He decides that these two subjects should be eliminated. Then he thinks how he would have been helped in business by a knowledge of bookkeeping, and he concludes that this subject deserves a place in the curriculum. He has recently received a letter from a college friend containing some errors in spelling. He is convinced that this branch of knowledge is being left in undeserved neglect. Or he is impressed by the spread of unsound theories of money among the poorer classes, and he believes that everybody should receive a thorough course in economics and finance. And so he rambles on, now on this subject, now on that.

Compare this haphazard, aimless thinking with that of the man of method. This man is confronted with the same general situation as our first thinker, but he makes his problem a different one. He first asks himself what end he has in view. He discovers that he is primarily trying to find out not so much—what subjects should be taught in the schools? as—what knowledge is of most worth? He puts the problem definitely before himself in this latter form. He then sees that the problem—what knowledge is of most worth?, implies that what is desired is not to find what subjects are of worth and what are not, but what is the relative value of subjects. His next step, obviously, is to discover a standard by which the relative value of subjects can be determined; and this, let us say, he finds in the help a knowledge of these subjects gives to complete living. Having decided this, he next classifies in the order of their importance the activities which constitute human life, and follows this by classifying subjects as they prepare for these activities.

Needless to say, the results obtained by this thinker will be infinitely more satisfactory than those arrived at by his unsystematic brother. Method, then, is essential. But how are we to apply it in all cases?

Now there are methods without number, and in many cases a problem will require a method all its own; but we here purpose to take up only those most general in application.

Before considering these methods of thinking, however, it would be well to ask ourselves what thinking is. As stated before, the term is loosely used to cover a wide range of mental processes. These processes we may roughly divide into memory, imagination and reasoning. It is the last only with which we have to deal. I admit that development of the memory is desirable. I admit that development of the imagination is equally desirable. But they are not the subject of this book. By “thinking” I mean reasoning. And our present purpose is to find the nature of this process.

Modern psychologists tell us that all reasoning begins in perplexity, hesitation, doubt. “The process of reasoning is one of problem solving. . . . The occasion for the reasoning is always a thwarted purpose.”

It is essential we keep this in mind. It differs from the popular conception even more than may appear at first sight. If a man were to know everything he could not think. Nothing would ever puzzle him, his purposes would never be thwarted, he would never experience perplexity or doubt, he would have no problems. If we are to conceive of God as an All-Knower, we cannot conceive of Him as a Thinking Being. Thinking is reserved for beings of finite intelligence.

Were we to study the origin and evolution of thinking, we would doubtless find that thinking arose in just this way—from thwarted purposes. If our lives and the lives of our animal ancestors had always run smoothly, if our every desire were immediately satisfied, if we never met an obstacle in anything we tried to do, thinking would never have appeared on this planet. But adversity forced us to it.

Tickle a frog’s left leg, and his right leg will immediately fly up and scratch it. The action is merely what psychologists would call a “reflex.” Absolutely no thinking takes place: the frog would do the same thing if you removed its brain. And if you tickle its right leg its left leg would fly up to scratch. But if you tickled both legs at once they could not both fly up and scratch each other. It would be a physical impossibility. Here, then, is a difficulty. The frog hesitates; thinking steps upon the scene. After mature deliberation the frog solves his problem: he holds his left leg still while he scratches it with his right, then he holds his right leg still and scratches that with his left.

We cannot, then, think on “general principles.” To try this is like attempting to chew laughing gas. To think at all requires a purpose, no matter how vague. The best thinking, however, requires a definite purpose, and the more definite this purpose the more definite will be our thinking. Therefore in taking up any special line of thought, we must first find just what our end or purpose is, and thus get clearly in mind what our problems are.

Advising a man to ask himself what his problems are may seem absurd. But it is just this confusion as to what they want to know which has driven men into error time and time again. The history of the never-ending philosophical controversy between “materialism” and “idealism” is largely a history of different ways of stating the issue; the progress made is mainly due to the increasing definiteness with which it has been stated.

One of the most frequent sources of confusion in stating questions is in failure to distinguish between what is and what ought to be. Considering woman suffrage a man will ask himself “What is woman’s sphere?,” when he really wants to know not what woman’s sphere actually is, but what it ought to be. Our first step, then, is to get our problem or problems clearly in mind, and to state them as definitely as possible. A problem properly stated is a problem partly solved.