James harvey robinson on various kinds of thinking. ON VARIOUS KIND OF THINKING 2022-11-08
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James Harvey Robinson was an American historian and educator who wrote extensively about the various kinds of thinking and their role in shaping our understanding of the world. In his book "The Mind in the Making: The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform," Robinson argued that there are different types of thinking that are important for solving problems, understanding the world, and engaging with others.
One of the key kinds of thinking that Robinson identified is analytical thinking, which involves breaking down complex ideas into simpler parts and examining them individually. This type of thinking is important for solving problems and making decisions, as it allows us to understand the underlying structures and patterns at play. Analytical thinking is also useful for understanding and evaluating arguments, as it helps us to identify the assumptions and logical steps that support or challenge a given position.
Another kind of thinking that Robinson emphasized is creative thinking, which involves coming up with new and original ideas. Creative thinking is important for generating new solutions to problems and for adapting to changing circumstances. It is often associated with artistic and intellectual pursuits, but it is also crucial in many practical fields, such as business and engineering.
In addition to analytical and creative thinking, Robinson also identified a number of other kinds of thinking that are important for understanding the world and engaging with others. These include critical thinking, which involves evaluating evidence and arguments in a systematic and unbiased way; historical thinking, which involves understanding events and phenomena in the context of the past; and moral thinking, which involves considering the ethical implications of our actions and decisions.
Robinson argued that these various kinds of thinking are not mutually exclusive, but rather work together to shape our understanding of the world. He believed that the ability to think critically, creatively, and analytically was essential for progress and social reform, and that education should be designed to foster these skills in students.
Overall, James Harvey Robinson's ideas about the various kinds of thinking continue to be influential in the field of education and beyond. His work has helped to highlight the importance of developing a range of thinking skills in order to understand the world and make informed decisions.
James Harvey Robinson
We should, in view of the considerations that have been mentioned, resent our supine credulity. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attack, whether it be our person, our family, our property, or our opinion. Even if they are tempted to tell the essential facts they dare not do so, for fear of losing their places, amid the applause of all the righteously minded. We have to make practical decisions. It doubtless influences all our speculations in its persistent tendency to self-magnification and self-justification, which are its chief preoccupations, but it is the last thing to make directly or indirectly for honest increase of knowledge. Since man is descended from less highly endowed animals, there must have been a time when the man-animal was in a state of animal ignorance.
But of late it has been shown that we are unaware of a great part of what we perceive, remember, will, and infer; and that a great part of the thinking of which we are aware is determined by that of which we are not conscious. We find in savage thought a sort of intensified and generalized taboo in the classification of things as clean and unclean and in the conceptions of the sacred. In industry and education administrative reform is constantly going on, with the hope of reducing friction and increasing efficiency. Human arrangements are no longer so foolproof as they may once have been when the world moved far more slowly than it now does. Name: Class: "James Harvey Robinson" by Harper's Magazine is in the public domain. Our editors and lawyers and the more vocal of our business men adhere to it. As his body lay quiet in sleep he found himself wandering in distant places.
In short, how are we to rid ourselves of our fond prejudices and open our minds? The dream has had a great influence in the building up of the mind. Those dim, remote cycles must have been full of great, but inconspicuous, originators who laid the foundations of civilization in discoveries and achievements so long taken for granted that we do not realize that they ever had to be made at all. This inquisitiveness is vastly stimulated by jealousy, suspicion, or any hint that we ourselves are directly or indirectly involved. Every thought reverberates through the body, and, on the other hand, alterations in our physical condition affect our whole attitude of mind. But most of us know too little of the past to realize the penalty that had to be paid for this application of intelligence. Each year in the life of a generation would therefore correspond to ten thousand years in the progress of the race.
The idea formerly held that the civilization of our ancestors affects our original nature is almost completely surrendered. We now turn to the second sanctified method of reform, moral uplift. Our churches and universities defend this assumption. Rubber or a Liberty Bond? As you read, take note of the examples that James Harvey Robinson uses to support his beliefs on the relationship between history and thought. Robinson believed that history could be used to help citizens better understand themselves and their communities.
ON VARIOUS KINDS OF opportunities.alumdev.columbia.edu
The world seems to demand a moral and economic regeneration which it is dangerous to postpone, but as yet impossible to imagine, let alone direct. English translation by Grace Read Robinson. Also, that the historical facts which I propose to recall would, if permitted to play a constant part in our thinking, automatically eliminate a very considerable portion of the gross stupidity and blindness which characterize our present thought and conduct in public affairs, and would contribute greatly to developing the needed scientific attitude toward human concerns—in other words, to bringing the mind up to date. Now, whether or no there are such things as spirits, Berlin and London have no souls, and Uncle Sam is as mythical as the great god Pan. As yet relatively little of the same kind of thought has been brought to bear on human affairs.
They constitute a story, like a novel or play or moving picture. They have almost consistently neglected the actual process of thought and have set the mind off as something apart to be studied by itself. James Harvey Robinson 1863-1936 was a professor of history at Columbia University for 25 years before co-founding the New School for Social Research. Learning among animals below man is individual, not co-operative and cumulative. I venture to think that if certain seemingly indisputable historical facts were generally known and accepted and permitted to play a daily part in our thought, the world would forthwith become a very different place from what it now is. This observation, however remarkable in itself, was not enough to produce a really creative thought. We are all born wholly uncivilized.
We resent criticisms of our views exactly as we do of anything else connected with ourselves. Man, like plants and animals in general, tends to go on from generation to generation, living as nearly as may be the life of his forbears. Abuses should be abolished or checked by forbidding them, or by some ingenious reordering of procedure. The former is more precise in his doctrines and confident in his prophecies than a scientific examination of mankind and its ways would at all justify; the other, more indefinite than he need be. Much of the data that we have regarding primitive man has been accumulated in recent times, for the most part as a result of the study of simple peoples. These probably remain nearly the same from generation to generation.
When we are offered a penny for our thoughts we always find that we have recently had so many things in mind that we can easily make a selection which will not compromise us too nakedly. Each tore away whatever part he could, and instantly began to eat it; some had the liver, some the kidneys, and, in short, no part on which we are accustomed to look with disgust escaped them. Capital is too selfish; Labor is bent on its own narrow interests regardless of the risks Capital takes. This would doubtless have seemed the idlest kind of an experiment to the stanch business men of the time, who, it happened, were just then denouncing the child-labor bills in their anxiety to avail themselves to the full of the results of earlier idle curiosity. He must at the first have learned just as his animal relatives learn—by fumbling and by forming accidental associations. We lead the simple life with Swedish matches, Brazilian coffee, Canadian bacon, California canned peaches, magazine rifles, jointed fishing rods, and electric flashlights.
James Harvey Robinson: 'On Various Kinds of Thinking'
Did I turn off the stove? As an old Stoic proverb has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, rather than by the things themselves. He does not learn by imitation, because he does not imitate. John Dewey has already reached this conclusion in regard to philosophy. I come back, then, to my original point that in this examination of existing facts history, by revealing the origin of many of our current fundamental beliefs, will tend to free our minds so as to permit honest thinking. The several hopes of reform mentioned above all assume that the now generally accepted notions of righteous human conduct are not to be questioned.
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