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T h i nk

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NEW THINKINGEdward De Bono

Edward Do Bono argues that while traditional logi- cal thinking of the sort developed by the ‘Gang of Three’ – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – is immensely valuable, it is, by itself, inadequate. In this article,De Bono explains why he believes other, more crea- tive forms of thinking need to be developed as new ‘software for the brain’.

I once set up on a computer a simple model of the brainwhich only had five neurons. This model was capable of fiftybillion thoughts. Any mathematician would tell you that isimpossible. That is because a mathematician would notunderstand neurons. Any electronics engineer would tell youthat is impossible. That is because electronic engineerswould not understand biological systems. There is a very,very simple biological principle which makes this possible.It is a principle that no engineer could ever think of, becauseit is totally contrary to engineering principles. It is this prin-ciple which is responsible for the marvelous working of thehuman brain.We have done very well in science and technology andvery poorly in human affairs. We have the same conflicts,fights, disagreements and wars as we had two thousandyears ago. We handle them no better. This is due mainly toour appalling thinking system. I believe that civilization wouldbe at least four hundred years further advanced, if we had abetter thinking system.What is the purpose of the brain? The purpose is to makestable patterns for dealing with a stable universe. One day afellow got up in the morning and set himself the task offiguring out in how many ways he could get dressed if therewere eleven items of clothing involved. He set up his per-sonal computer which worked for forty hours non-stop (prob-ably working at 200 megahertz in those days). This is not

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surprising as there are 39,916,800 ways of getting dressedwith eleven items (factorial 11). If we tried one way everyminute this would take up almost all our lives. Of course,the brain does not do this. The brain has established a pat-tern (one state follows another with a probability greater thanchance) and we simply use that pattern. In my book

The Mechanism of Mind

(1969) I described how the neural net-works in the brain do this: how they allow incoming informa-tion to organise itself into sequences or patterns. This bookwas read by the leading physicist in the world (ProfessorMurray Gell Mann) who said: ‘You stumbled on these thingsten years before mathematicians looked at chaos and com-plexity’. He should know because he set up the Santa FeInstitute which is the world’s leading body concerned with‘complexity’. There is no mystery as to how the brain formsand uses such patterns.There are thousands and thousands of people writing soft-ware for computers. What about software for the human brain?What efforts have we made in this direction? The answer isvirtually none because we have been unreasonably compla-cent with the software we already have. Where did this soft-ware come from?

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After the Dark Ages came the Renaissance. Hellenic cul-ture had gone to Alexandria then across North Africa andback into Europe through the Arab philosophers in Spain.This wonderful new thinking was eagerly embraced becauseit was such a change from the dogma and doctrine of exist-ing thinking. Humankind was now allowed to use logic andreason. Humankind had a more central position in the uni-verse. Not surpisingly, this new thinking was eagerly takenup by the Humanists who wanted non-church thinking. Rathermore surprisingly the thinking was also taken up by theChristian Church under people like Thomas Aquinas of Na-ples.

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So this thinking became – and has remained – the domi-nant software of Western (and largely human) thinking eversince. It has remained so because it is indeed excellent just like the front left wheel of a motorcar is excellent (butinadequate by itself).This thinking was essentially the thinking of ‘The Gang ofThree’. The first of the Gang was Socrates who was trainedas a Sophist. In eighty per cent of the dialogues in which heas involved there is no positive outcome. When his irritatedlisteners wanted to know what was ‘right’ he replied that hisbusiness was to point out what was ‘wrong’. Socrates has areputation for asking questions. In fact he mostly used ‘lead-ing questions’, often in a most dishonest way (unintention-ally) to lead his listeners to accept a point of view.Then there was Plato who was influenced by the math-ematician Pythagoras. Plato believed that just as there wereultimate truths in mathematics there should be ultimate ‘in-ner’ truths elsewhere as well. Plato did not believe in de-mocracy and his design for a modern state (The Republic)became the official doctrine of the Nazi party in Germany.Finally, there was Aristotle with his ‘inclusion/exclusion’logic. From past experience you set up boxes, categories,definitions, principles etc. and then you judge whether some-thing fits in the box or does not. So very dominant is thisidiom that when Lotfi Zaider in the USA developed fuzzylogic in the 1970s all learned journals refused to publishanything on fuzzy logic – because it contradicted Aristotle!From the Gang of Three came a thinking that was con-cerned with ‘what is’.At its best we can imagine a doctor in his or her surgerywho is faced with a child with a rash. The doctor seeks tofind out ‘what this is’, seeks to make a diagnosis. There arepossibilities: could be allergy, could be sunburn, could bemeasles, etc. From the signs, symptoms and history thedoctor makes a judgement. The doctor identifies a ‘stand-ard situation’ – say measles. The doctor now knows (fromcollective past experience), the nature of the illness, the