In order to get original ideas, you need to be able to look at the same information everyone else does and organize it into a new and different pattern. This is active thinking. A passive thinker is unable to move beyond the given information to new ideas, while an active thinker is constantly organizing information into new ideas.
Thinkertoys provide concrete techniques to help you become an active thinker. Thinkertoys reflect linear and intuitive thinking, both of which are necessary for optimum creativity. The basic difference between the two is that the linear thinkertoys structure existing information while the intuitive toys generate new information using insight, imagination, and intuition.
We have two eyes, two ears, two hands, and two minds. Our left brain thinks in terms of words and symbols while our right brain thinks in terms of images. Linear thinkertoys are for the left brain, intuitive thinkertoys for the right brain.
| LEFT BRAIN | RIGHT BRAIN |
| dealing with one thing at a time | integrating many inputs at once |
| processing information in a linear fashion | wholistic perception or thinking |
| operating sequentially | seat of dreams |
| writing | awareness without definition |
| analyzing | seeing whole solutions at once |
| idea-linking | seeing similarities |
| abstracting | intuition |
| categorizing | insight |
| logic | gut feeling |
| reasoning | synthesizing |
| judgement | visualizing |
| mathematical | visual memory |
| verbal memory | recognizing patterns |
| using symbols | relating things to the present |
The left side is the side used more by writers, mathematicians, and scientists; the right side by artists, craftspeople, and musicians. Remembering a person’s name is a function of the left-brain memory while remembering their face is a function of the right brain. Reading books on how to play golf is a job for the left brain, while getting a “gut feel” for the golf swing is a job for the right brain.
Imagine a long passenger train travelling down a railroad track. One person is staring straight at the train as it passes him. He sees that part of the train that is passing in front of him, from car to car. Another person views the same train from a airplane above. She sees the whole train, all at once, from beginning to end. This is the difference between the two sides of our brain. The left brain processes pieces of information sequentially, one by one, bit by bit. The right brain processes information all at once, holistically, intuitionally.
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