Chapter 11: Experience and thinking

Words...are easily taken for ideas...we are easily trained to be content with a minimum of meaning (p. 119).

An experience, a very humble experience, is capable of generating and carrying any amount of theory (or intellectual content), but a theory apart from an experience cannot be definitely grasped even as theory (p. 120).

Thinking is the intentional endeavor to discover specific connections between something which we do and the consequences which result, so that the two become continuous...an explicit rendering of the intelligent element in our experience (p. 121).

Thinking occurs when things are uncertain or doubtful or problematic...Since the situation in which thinking occurs is a doubtful one, thinking is a process of inquiry...all thinking is research...all thinking involves risk (pp. 122-123).

What we do becomes experience when we reflect upon it. (Lev Vygotsky)