Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

More on Thinking Backwards















walter said...

What is being described is the scientific method. (reductionist thinking). “Top down” thinking applied to an indeterminate problem will yield insanity. Can't be done. It's analogous to describing why the Mona Lisa is pretty. Or explaining why the sky is blue to a blind man. We are trained to do this (reductionist thinking) in school, where “beliefs” are presented as “facts”. As to psychotropic drugs. I agree totally. There is a film on you tube, 5 parts, (The doctor who heard voices) in which Rufus Gay, in an argument with a psychiatrist says “you're not making them better, you're making them dumb.” See the discussion @ Walt

Daniel said...

I think top down thinking has its place. Some problems can't be solved by working strictly from the ground up. I do some of my best work, and solve some of the toughest problems, by skipping around in the problem solving process, validating or throwing out what doesn't work, etc. Properly applied, intuition and "backwards thinking" is your friend.

Tell me, how would you ever figure out how the Mona Lisa is pretty without thinking in reverse? How does she make you feel? Why would she make you feel that way? Fill in the blanks, ask others, compare notes, draw conclusions, experiment with photos or paintings of your own. All very scientific, if you ask me, so long as you remember to throw out the trash when it spoils. (lose bad ideas without bias or hesitation when invalidated)

emile said...

Relational thinking provides a 'transcendent context' in which 'top-down' analytical thinking' and 'bottom-up' synthetical thinking and 'constructivist' and 'deconstructivist' inquiry approaches in general, can be presented and compared relative to one another. Relational thinking brings a multiplicity of ostensibly different observations into connective confluence so that the understanding is delivered by 'coherency' across them rather than by construction or deconstruction of what the observer deems to be their 'most significant' parts or structures.

This takes more words. In this case, too many for me (my limited capabilities for relational articulation) than the 4096 character limit allows. So, my comment for anyone interested is posted on my blog at

Kamagra Gel said...

Superb post, I never think backwards like you put it in here, I have tried but nothing like this.

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