- LEarninG and tHinkinG witH tHinGs (^) | 119
Before answering that question, first consider this question: where
does thinking occur?
If your answer is along the lines of “in the brain,” you’re not alone. This
view of a mind that controls the body has been the traditional view of
cognition for the better part of human history. In this view, the brain
is the thinking organ, and as such it takes input from external stimuli,
processes those stimuli, and then directs the body as to how to respond.
Thinking; then doing.
But, a more recent and growing view of cognition rejects this notion of
mind-body dualism. Rather than thinking and then doing, perhaps we
think through doing.
Consider the game of chess. Have you ever lifted up a chess piece,
hovered over several spots where you could move that piece, only to
return that piece to the original space, still undecided on your move?
What happened here? For all that movement, there was no pragmatic
change to the game. If indeed we think and then do (as mind-body
dualism argues), what was the effect of moving that chess piece, given
that there was no change in the position? If there is no outward change
in the environment, why do we instruct our bodies to do these things?
The likely answer is that we were using our environment to extend our
thinking skills. By hovering over different options, we are able to more
clearly see possible outcomes. We are extending the thinking space to
include the board in front of us.
Thinking through doing.
This is common in chess. It’s also common in Scrabble, in which a
player frequently rearranges tiles in order to see new possibilities.
Let’s return to our Kanban example.
Even though many cognitive neuroscientists (as well as philosophers
and linguists) would likely debate a precise explanation for the appeal
of sticky notes as organizational tools, the general conversation would
shift the focus away from the stickies themselves to the role of our
bodies in this interaction, focusing on how organisms and the human
mind organize themselves by interacting with their environment. This
perspective, generally described as embodied cognition, postulates that
thinking and doing are so closely linked as to not be serial processes.
We don’t think and then do; we think through doing.
nandana
(Nandana)
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