Rethinking Thinking: Problem Solving from Sun Tzu to Google

Martin Cohen

Apr 2022 · Andrews UK Limited

About this ebook

How do generals - and business strategists - outwit their opponents? Where do designers and artists get their inspiration from? How can all of us 'pump up the originality' and steer our thinking off the standard, well-worn tracks? Everyone, as the French philosopher René Descartes pointed out long ago, thinks. That's the easy bit. The harder part, and what this book is really about, is how to make your thinking original and effective. And here the problem is that too often we don't really engage the gears of our brain, don’t really look at issues in an original or active way, we just respond. Like computers, inputs are processed according to established rules and outputs are thus largely predetermined. Yet that’s not what makes us human and that’s not where the big prizes in life are to be found. In the third millennium, we need to think a bit more - not less! And so the focus in this book is on practical suggestions about ways to think better... on thinking strategies that each have their own style, applications and benefits.

About the author

Martin Cohen is a British philosopher who specialises in philosophy of science and political philosophy. He studied philosophy and social science at Sussex University under some of the early group of philosophers who launched the University's pioneering language and values programme. After teaching and research posts in Britain and Australia, he moved to France to concentrate on his writing, which typically blends 'psychological and social studies with philosophical theory... eschewing technical jargon and using easily understood scenarios to demonstrate the theme', as one reviewer put it. His most popular book, 101 Philosophy Problems has been published in a dozen languages, sold nearly a quarter of a million copies, and is now in its fourth English edition. A book on thought experiments, Wittgenstein's Beetle and Other Classic Thought Experiments was selected by The Guardian as one of its 'books of the week’, while Mind Games was selected by France Culture as one of new philosophy books for dissection in the program essai du jour. His book Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies (2015) is popular with educators in the US.