Analogical thinking also exists. Analogical thinking helps us understand something unknown by comparing it to something known. Analogies have allowed humanity to comprehend things beyond the reach of our senses for thousands of years. Analogies occur in different forms, even a myth can be an analogy. Steve Jobs is considered a great advocate of analogies.
Is it important how we think? Yes, because our thoughts shape the world we see and the aspects of that world we perceive. Imagine a tree and how many different ways it can be interpreted. Yes, to observe and think about it. If we were tree traders, maybe we would only see its monetary value on the market. As artists, we would observe it in a different way and notice many things that others wouldn’t. If we were scientists, we would approach it differently again, depending on what particularly interests us. Now imagine standing in front of a tree in poetic ecstasy – wouldn’t that poetic way of thinking open your heart and soul?
Maybe, by giving too much importance to logical or analytical thinking without considering other equally important ways of thinking, we have created many problems and destructive patterns. In everything that exists, there are polarities, and I believe that pure rational thinking needs to be balanced with thinking from the heart.
Imagine, there is also poetic thinking, and there is even a program at Stanford University on poetic thinking. The value of poetic thinking is beautifully described in these often-quoted words by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. a: “Man sees well only with the heart; the essential is invisible to the eyes.”
Perhaps it is time for philosophy and thinking to be understood much more broadly and deeply, as something that encompasses the rational and intuitive, the logical, analogical, and poetic. Something that enables us to become moral human beings and to approach the wisdom and mystery of life. Plato in Theaetetus says: “Thinking is a conversation of the soul with itself,” philosopher Jorge Angel Livraga once said: “Philosophy is music composed by the soul in the quiet dimension of the invisible,” and Buddha: “We become what we think”…