“Everything, if you think about it well, gives you something to think about,” once wrote Friedrich Nietzsche (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”).
What exactly is thinking? Talking to oneself? Probably not, because combinations of words are merely a simplified representation of thoughts, not their essence. So, when using words as tools for thinking, we are only using labels for things or states and not reaching their core.
Albert Einstein himself stated: “I have no doubt that our thinking takes place mostly without the use of signs (words), and furthermore, to a large extent without the involvement of consciousness. How else can we explain the fact that sometimes a sensation spontaneously amazes us? This amazement arises when the sensation contradicts the world of concepts that has been established within us.”
Another important aspect is the logic of thinking. But does thinking limit itself only to logic? Or does it reach deeper—into the realm of emotions—the kingdom of intuition? Probably so, because giants of science have weighed in on this matter. Since we’ve already mentioned Albert Einstein, he put it this way: “Thinking without intuition is empty, intuition without thinking is blind.”
And so, there is confusion around thinking. However, this should not worry us, because even if we do not know exactly what thinking is, we never cease to fulfill the Cartesian definition of “being,” for as Władysław Grzeszczyk wrote in “Parade of Paradoxes”: “even one who only thinks they think—has the right to consider that they exist.”
Thinking, like any meaningful activity to which we decide to devote time, should provide valuable results. So, what is the most desirable outcome of thinking? In my opinion, it is making decisions and acting upon them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson concluded it simply: “to think is to act,” and he was certainly quite right, just as Henri Bergson affirmed such a style of thinking, to “act like a thinking man, think like a man of action.” So, let’s get to work and remember that “he who thinks only of food while working, surely does not think of work while eating” (Władysław Grzeszczyk). Meanwhile, that’s all the thinking about thinking for today.
Myśli zapisane 