This book explains how we learn, how our pre-conscious experience-trapping neural networks, ‘generalise’ and ‘abstract’ from a stream of personal and cultural experiences, to construct our causal maps and models of reality, our value systems and our emotional associations. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of human thinking and shows how we can take conscious control of our personal development, updating old and dysfunctional models of reality to take account of new experiences and changed circumstances. It opens up the possibility of rewriting the HOWs and WHYs that drive our behaviour and motivation, and presents a powerful new Graphical Thinking Tool that everyone can use, individually or in groups, to explore and understand the deep structure of any problem, any system, and any body of knowledge. Understanding may be unfashionable, but it is still ‘the ultimate study skill’, and the key to success in any field of endeavour.
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By John Evans
Apr 25, 2012
Understading thinking from mathhoang.blogspot.commathhoang.blogspot.com I’m reading a brilliant book called “Understanding Thinking” by John Evans, and although only a third of the way through it, I have to tell you that this is an amazing book! Evans makes fascinating connections and parallels between thinkers in history, thinking models, and societal belief structures… this is so good I just have to recommend it to anyone wanting a really good read and a really good think. An enlightening and thought-provoking book ---- vietnam_hoangminhnguyen mathhoang
"Understanding Thinking" At last, a book that bridges academic boundaries and explains the real-life implications of neural network research. It explains the continuous and self-reinforcing mechanisms by which our neural networks trap personal and cultural experinces, give them meaning, and assemble them into working models of reality which shape and filter our subsequent perception and experince of life. This has profound implications for anyone involved in education. If this book had been available 10 years ago, my time at universtity would have been 10 times more productive, more fun and much less stressful.
"Understanding Thinking" The author has clearly thought a great deal about this subject, and there are fresh insights on almost every page. The combination of up-to-date knowledge of computer design and programming with the latest discoveries about the working of the neural networks in our brain, brings a fresh understanding of how we think and how we can avoid the flaws in our thinking processes that have caused so many human enterprises to fail in the past. The summary of the history of thought in chapter 1 is excellent and the evolutionary history of the brain's development explains many things that puzzle us about ourselves. The weaknesses of our linear, literary or oral descriptions of things, events and relationships are contrasted with the power of graphical dynamic thinking tools. This comparison could probably only have been noticed by a dyslexic systems designer, but once the differences are brought to our attention the relative strengths and weaknesses of text... More > verses Graphical Thinking become obvious. The need for both is surely shown by the weather maps on TV, where the map conveys more than the oral account can ever do, and tells it more quickly. With each new topic there are excellent diagrams which illustrate the deeper understanding that can be achieved by the use of Graphical Thinking, and its versatility for describing our understanding of many different sorts of problems, systems or subject knowledge. As it says on the cover, understanding is still the ultimate study skill, and this book will help the reader to understand and remember more of any topic they study. It will be useful to any students who want to use their minds to make the best of their education, and of life itself. P.D. Retired Head Master< Less
"Understanding Thinking" Brilliant. Not an entirely new subject for me, but such a fascinating exposition I read it from start to finish in one sitting.
"Comment sent to Fluffbuster Books " Demeron Skouson. http://dskouson.blogspot.com/ said... Very interesting - lots of fundamental theory in why we think the way we do. I love the Fluff Buster notion. Right on!
