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Thought

Chimpanzee contemplating a laptop computer

Another stage in development is cognitive thinking. The cerebral cortex develops last, and continues to develop for years after birth. That is why we can do calculus as teenagers but usually not as toddlers.

The cerebral cortex is the repository of reason and intellect. It is the last area to develop in the growing child, with many higher cortical functions only beginning to appear late in childhood. Comprising the outer portion of the brain, it is also the last area of the brain to have developed throughout the evolution of species. In this sense, human intellectual functions reflect a “higher” state of development. Rational processes include executive function, planning, mental flexibility, working memory, response inhibition, recognition of memory and sustained attention, as well as the more specific thought processes of honesty, curiosity, imagination, skepticism, inquisitiveness, introspection, counterfactual thinking, critical thinking, creative thinking, abstract thinking, and symbolic thinking.

Many people say that the human capacity for thought is what most distinguishes us from other species. The rational mind allowed us to develop a complex symbolic language and as humans acquired the skills of science, radio, television and computer technology emerged. Our marvelous cerebral cortex helped us create the machinery to produce a plethora of manufactured products and a complex system to transport them all over the planet. It is the foundation for our various systems of government, by which people seek to gain purposeful and rational control over vast networks of business, industry and finance, whose complexity challenges our ability to govern them. It allows us to see order amid complexity, while creatures of other species cannot begin to appreciate either the order or the complexity. Our architecture, our science, our arts and our histories are products of our human intellect.

Still, the intellect alone cannot give meaning to our lives. It can tell us how to achieve our goals — how to move from one state of affairs to another — by assessing the probable consequences of various courses of action, but alone it cannot tell us what those goals should be. It can tell us the direction we can, may or must travel to realize our ends, but without the emotional mind to value those ends, and process experience, it is lost, and without our activity the rational mind has no empirical basis for evaluating its beliefs, which would only remain hypotheses; not to mention that without the ability to act, mere knowledge would be a comparatively sterile tool.  The intellectual mind can rationally assess competing values based on a more-or-less fixed scheme of value comparisons. Yet no matter how many layers of rational analysis we fold back, the question of meaning — the province of the limbic system and midbrain, mainly — will always raise a more fundamental question, a question nearer to the core of our Being and the divine.

Real

True Narratives

We can find a particularly fascinating part of the story of human cognition in art work that is still visible in ancient caves. Without a word, primitive peoples told us how they thought and expressed their ideas.

Reviewing White's book, Ian Tattersall, curator of physical anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York city, concludes: "Deep down, human beings haven't changed one whit since prehistoric times." We have always been thinkers. What has changed most in the past several millennia is that we now have the resources to think in more sophisticated ways.

Technical and Analytical Readings

In the "modern" world, people have been inclined to pit the intellect against the emotions. This way of looking at ourselves will never produce a fully realized way of looking at ourselves or a fully integrated spirituality, but on the contrary will interfere with them both. Only by seeing the intellect, like the emotions, as an indispensable role player in human development can we see it in its proper light. A comparative reading of the following works also tells the story of the ongoing debate over the nature of human cognition.

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Selection of music to illustrate this subject requires identification of the methods of composition.  The music itself might express many things. Several composers have been identified as “thinking man’s” composers.

Today, one such composer is Steve Reich, who was influential in developing minimalism. “Reich is impatient, a quality that surely comes from having a mind that works 10 times faster than everyone else’s . . .” He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work “Double Sextet”. In interview, Reich has charted the evolution of his work. His works include:

Stepping back 400 years, we encounter the music of William Byrd. “He lived long enough to incorporate a wide range of styles in his music -- and he knew how to stay alive, while sticking discreetly to his Catholic faith, during the reign of the Tudors, who brought in the Protestant Reformation.” In addition to being a composer: “There is something powerfully direct in his economical word-painting, and it is always restrained by its context . . .” Chelys Consort of Viols (Charlston) recorded a gorgeous album of his vocal works [“The Honour of William Byrd” (2023) (75’)]. His vocal works include:

Retreating in time just a bit more, we come to Josquin des Préz, who “wedded the logic of math to the magic of melody, and his compositions feel like they unfold with both perfect clarity and atmospheric strangeness.” There is a caveat: “During the Renaissance, his crystalline choral works led him to be celebrated as the Michelangelo of music. But many works attributed to him may be those of gifted contemporaries.” Still, the music speaks for itself. In addition to 18 masses, others of his works are represented on disc:

Like many composers of his time, François Couperin (1668-1733) wrote cerebral music, for its time: pre-Enlightenment, pre-classical (Baroque) compositions with an emphasis on structure and form. “Each of the Livres includes numerous Suites of pieces, which Couperin called ordres. Like Bach’s well-known Suites and Partitas, these ordres comprised numerous short movements; unlike Bach’s works however, and unlike Couperin’s French predecessors, the pieces mostly have descriptive titles rather than generic dance assignations.” “. . . Couperin was a forward-looking composer whose own keyboard works reflect the developments in composing in France and the changing tastes of his audiences.” His intent was to perfect music by combining the French and Italian styles. Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin illustrate this effort and are among his pre-eminent works. Olivier Baumont has recorded the complete Pièces de Clavecin. Other harpsichordists have issued recordings by livre:

Also worth hearing is the harpsichord music of François’ cousin, Armand-Louis Couperin; and the erudite violin sonatas of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre.

Today, we have the thinking person’s pianist, Alfred Brendel. He has made leading recording of many great works, mainly from the Classical and early Romantic eras.

music to illustrate this subject requires identification of the methods of composition.  The music itself might express many things. Several composers have been identified as “thinking man’s” composers.

Today, one such composer is Steve Reich, who was influential in developing minimalism. “Reich is impatient, a quality that surely comes from having a mind that works 10 times faster than everyone else’s . . .” He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work “Double Sextet”. In interview, Reich has charted the evolution of his work. His works include:

Stepping back 400 years, we encounter the music of William Byrd. “He lived long enough to incorporate a wide range of styles in his music -- and he knew how to stay alive, while sticking discreetly to his Catholic faith, during the reign of the Tudors, who brought in the Protestant Reformation.” In addition to being a composer: “There is something powerfully direct in his economical word-painting, and it is always restrained by its context . . .” Chelys Consort of Viols (Charlston) recorded a gorgeous album of his vocal works [“The Honour of William Byrd” (2023) (75’)]. His vocal works include:

Retreating in time just a bit more, we come to Josquin des Préz, who “wedded the logic of math to the magic of melody, and his compositions feel like they unfold with both perfect clarity and atmospheric strangeness.” There is a caveat: “During the Renaissance, his crystalline choral works led him to be celebrated as the Michelangelo of music. But many works attributed to him may be those of gifted contemporaries.” Still, the music speaks for itself. In addition to 18 masses, others of his works are represented on disc:

Like many composers of his time, François Couperin (1668-1733) wrote cerebral music, for its time: pre-Enlightenment, pre-classical (Baroque) compositions with an emphasis on structure and form. “Each of the Livres includes numerous Suites of pieces, which Couperin called ordres. Like Bach’s well-known Suites and Partitas, these ordres comprised numerous short movements; unlike Bach’s works however, and unlike Couperin’s French predecessors, the pieces mostly have descriptive titles rather than generic dance assignations.” “. . . Couperin was a forward-looking composer whose own keyboard works reflect the developments in composing in France and the changing tastes of his audiences.” His intent was to perfect music by combining the French and Italian styles. Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin illustrate this effort and are among his pre-eminent works. Olivier Baumont has recorded the complete Pièces de Clavecin. Other harpsichordists have issued recordings by livre:

Also worth hearing is the harpsichord music of François’ cousin, Armand-Louis Couperin; and the erudite violin sonatas of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre.

Today, we have the thinking person’s pianist, Alfred Brendel. He has made leading recording of many great works, mainly from the Classical and early Romantic eras.

Music: songs and other short pieces

Visual Arts

Film and Stage