Writing is thinking
People talk a lot about how the process of writing and revision itself is a form of thinking. This makes sense to me. Writing forces you to crystallise the abstract into something tangible and coherent.
A concern arises here that if we do not write then perhaps we do not think deeply. This to me doesn’t make intuitive sense because reading and writing is a relatively recent development in terms of human evolution. We’ve surely been capable of “deep” thought for much longer than this?
Maybe we should generalise this idea of writing/thinking equivalence more. Perhaps the fundamental practice, what we really do when we are writing, is to crystallise our abstract thoughts into something with tangible structure and permanence. In this light, we can now see there are plenty of other creative processes that fall under this umbrella, for example:
- Writing computer code
- Mathematical proofs
- Visual arts
- Music
- Chemical formulae
- Creating taxonomies and classification systems (e.g. in zoology)
- Building ontologies and knowledge graphs
- Engineering design
- Circuit design
- Architectural drafting/Urban planning
- Building construction
- Game design
- Dance
- Film and animation
- Landscape/garden design
- Fashion design
- Interactive/digital art
- Sculpture
- Ceramics
- Furniture making
- Model building
- Textile arts (weaving, knitting)
- Creating maps and diagrams
- Developing business processes
- Designing user interfaces
To me, all these represent crystallisations of thought with elements of structure and permanence. Like writing, they are often practised iteratively, starting with coarser forms and refining towards something that might better express the thoughts (and feelings) of the creator. Their physical realisation also creates a medium through which we can communicate and collaborate on ideas. Each may differ in what kinds of thoughts and feelings they help us to explore, refine and understand. Each operates at a different degree of abstraction.
Unlike writing, it’s easy to believe that some of these have existed (in some shape or form) long into our evolutionary past. Therefore, perhaps writing is just one more recent invention in a long continuous string of inventions of various methods throughout our human history to crystallise and iterate on our ideas and feelings, an invention particularly suited to certain kinds of abstract reasoning.
Some media such as dance (and to a certain extent music) seem much more ephemeral means of crystallisation. Perhaps here, permanence is found in the movements that are imprinted on the minds of the performer or viewer through experience. The abstract thoughts and feelings of the choreographer have been translated into a physical form that is then in turn imprinted on the mind in a more permanent way, a way that allows for iteration. During the act of creation, the dancer can pause at any point to physically explore and experiment with how well their choreography expresses their abstract internal intentions.
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