EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGES - 3rd July 2000

Errors in thinking!

At a recent seminar I said that logic was more a matter of communication than of thinking. Men had always worked in groups (hunting parties, was parties etc.) so logic was necessary to get others to go along with you. Women had tended to work on their own and could therefore use intuition much more.

My intention was to imply that tuition was powerful but that men were not so good at it (also at holistic, broad picture). A woman in the audience thought I was saying that women were not logical. That was far from my intention. But if you set out with a set of fixed perceptions then you see the world through those perceptions.

We know from David Perkin's work at Harvard that 90 per cent of the rrors in thinking are errors in perception. Yet tradition forces us to believe that thinking is all about logic. In the end logic is about arranging the pieces provided by selective perception.

 Edward de Bono nmt
2nd July 2000
Little Green Island!