The Need to Change Thinking Behavior

By Edward de Bono
Reprinted with permission from The de Bono Group 

We have developed many excellent thinking tools for argument and analysis. Our information technology methods are constantly improving. But we have developed few tools to deal with our ordinary everyday thinking-the sort of thinking we do in conversations and meetings.

In fact, our traditional thinking methods have not changed for centuries. While these methods were powerful in dealing with a relatively stable world (where ideas and concepts tended to live longer than people), they are no longer adequate to deal with the rapidly changing world of today where new concepts and ideas are urgently needed.

Historical Background
The fall of the Roman Empire in Europe was followed by the Dark Ages. The so-called barbarian hordes swept across what had been the civilizations of Rome and Greece.

Scholarship, reading, writing, and thinking were only preserved in the great monasteries and abbeys of the Church. Naturally, the thinking that took place in the monasteries and abbeys was concerned with theology and with preserving the doctrine and dogma of the Christian faith.

Then came the Renaissance. The Renaissance was brought about by the discovery of the classic thinking methods of the ancient Greek philosophers. This "new thinking" provided a breath of fresh air. Humanity was given a more central role in the universe. Thinkers were allowed to use reason to work things out. Logic was now allowed.

It is hardly surprising that this new thinking was eagerly embraced by the "humanists" or non-church thinkers because it gave them a framework for thinking and also for challenging the church. At the same time, this new thinking was embraced by church scholars such as Thomas Aquinas of Naples, who fashioned Aristotelian logic into a powerful, argumentative way of proving heretics wrong. So the two main thinking groups in Western culture adopted, with eagerness, this classic Greek thinking.

Argument and Critical Thinking
To this day, Western culture depends on this type of thinking. In family arguments, in business discussions, in the law courts, and in governing assemblies, we use the thinking system of the Greeks, based on argument and critical thinking.

I sometimes refer to prominent philosophers of this day as the "gang of three." Who were the famous Greek gang of three, and how did they form the thinking habits of Western culture?

The Gang of Three

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Published by Advanced Practical Thinking Training,(r) Inc. Des Moines, Iowa 50322
Copyright 1998. The McQuaig Group Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

Advanced Practical Thinking Training,(r) Inc. Official Edward de Bono Thinking Methods