SUO: Stories Unveiling Ontologenesis
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| In any event, it is desirable that the teacher should rid himself of the notion
| that "thinking" is a single, unalterable faculty; that he should recognize that
| it is a term denoting the various ways in which things acquire significance. It
| is desirable to expel also the kindred notion that some subjects are inherently
| "intellectual", and hence possessed of an almost magical power to train the
| faculty of thought. Thinking is specific, not a machine-like, ready-made
| apparatus to be turned indifferently and at will upon all subjects, as a
| lantern may throw its light as it happens upon horses, streets, gardens,
| trees, or river. Thinking is specific, in that different things suggest
| their own appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories, and in that
| they do this in very different ways with different persons. As the growth
| of the body is through the assimilation of food, so the growth of mind is
| through the logical organization of subject-matter. Thinking is not like a
| sausage machine which reduces all materials indifferently to one marketable
| commodity, but is a power of following up and linking together the specific
| suggestions that specific things arouse. Accordingly, any subject, from Greek
| to cooking, and from drawing to mathematics, is intellectual, if intellectual
| at all, not in its fixed inner structure, but in its function -- in its power
| to start and direct significant inquiry and reflection. What geometry does
| for one, the manipulation of laboratory apparatus, the mastery of a musical
| composition, or the conduct of a business affair, may do for another.
|
| John Dewey, 'How We Think',
| Prometheus, Buffalo, NY, 1991.
| D.C. Heath, Lexington, MA, 1910.
| Pages 38-39.
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