In order to get a good handle on Aristotle’s Logic, and on Map Thinking™ as well, we need to turn to something often thought of as frivolous, or inexact, by “serious” thinkers.
ART.
If you are going to convey a piece of reality in a work of art you need to provide your perceiver with certain factors. These factors represent what the perceiver would encounter were they to have the “Real Thing” in front of them rather than the artistic representation.
The first thing to be considered in a work of art, especially if you are going to plan on doing one, is line. Where to place it and how “hard” to place it. Some forms of art, such as comic strips, are entirely composed of hard lines. At the other extreme you have Monet tossing dabs of paint on a canvas: You cannot distinguish a a line anywhere when looking at it up close. When you back off far enough your eye will supply the lines you need to distinguish what you are looking at.
In reality there are no lines.
Your mind supplies them all.
Just as happens when looking at the “Real Thing”.
Monet makes use of this mental trick in order to paint closer to the way reality is.
This may be harping, but “Our mind does not see reality the way it is”. Our mind sees reality in ways that enable the mind to process the information it receives more efficiently.
A Map Thinker ™ is always aware of this. When a Map Thinker™ uses Logic they are aware they are using a simplistic form of reasoning that is useful.
“Pure Thought” in the traditional Aristotelean Logical sense is Simplistic thought.
Does not mean Traditional Aristotelean Logic is not useful.
Logic is so useful that it does not matter what I say there will always be people who will believe Map Thinking™ is stupid and that Traditional Aristotlean Logic is a higher form or reasoning.
What Traditional Aristotelean Logic does is describe reality in simplistic, bite sized pieces.
Higher forms of reasoning.
People think Mathematics is a higher form or reasoning.
When I was in school the teachers taught that Einstein used “Higher Mathematics” to arrive at The General Theory of Relativity.
Wrong.
Einstein came up with his genius ideas, all of them, while day dreaming. He used mathematics to describe what he saw while day dreaming and predict what would prove his fantasies to be truth rather than fiction. The fact is that Imagination, as proven by Einstein and others, is The Highest Form of Reasoning.
Imagination allows us to boldly draw lines where they have never been drawn before.
© 2013 All Rights Reserved.
The Map Thinker (tm) 
Leave a Reply