Questions as tools for thinking - by Gordon Brander
Highlights
Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question–you have to want to know–in order to open up the space for the answer to fit. Clayton Christensen ⤴️
The crucial requirement is for the self to allow the other to “speak back” and to accommodate the unexpected so that self affects other, and other affects self. Avoiding requisite variety, both get partially “out of control” in a mix of positive and negative feedback, thus conversing along non-determinable trajectories to arrive at previously unknown destinations. ⤴️
This seems to be a great motivation for the conversational dialectic
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Heisenberg ⤴️
Great quote for prior knowledge
Every question is a way of seeing. The question acts as a lens around which we factor our understandings ⤴️
If what you know, which shapes what you get from material, is called prior knowledge, maybe questions that you keep in mind can be “prior concerns” that guide you through your navigation of the dialectic
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers. James Baldwin ⤴️
Perhaps a tool for thought isn’t so much a tool for collecting answers, as a tool for asking questions? ⤴️
Take the account of the adjacent possible. Whatever questions we have, and therefore insights we can have, are limited by the current understanding. Learning, and tools for thought, which are “understanding landscapes,” expand our adjacent possible to allow us to ask better questions and then better insight