A need to rethink our thinking in a changing world

We all think, but these days how many of us have minds of our own?

It’s significant to me that on the very first page of his new book, Rethinking Thinking: Problem-solving from Sun Tzu to Google (Imprint Academic, UK £14.95 / US $29.90, April 2022), the popular British philosopher Martin Cohen writes that ‘… in an increasingly totalitarian age, governments erode our sphere of control and whole populations are corralled into ever-more circumscribed roles and routines’.

This when, sadly, homo sapiens, literally the ‘thinking human’, rarely justifies that biological category — yet the ability to think, meaning the ability to imagine new possibilities and find new solutions to old problems, is ‘our great gift as a species and where the big prizes in life are found’.

I avoid the old cliché ‘thought-provoking’ when reviewing books but, in this case, the term seems entirely appropriate, especially in the sense that Cohen would mean it: that of thinking creatively instead of quiescently, of turning our minds to what really matters. He wants to take issue with assumptions made by philosophers and psychologists in favour of ‘logical thinking’ over intuition and instead make the case for creative insight.

Cohen’s challenge, using practical suggestions in a useful historical perspective, is…