Modes of Thinking

“John Dewey once made a most perceptive distinction between ‘thinking’ and ‘thought.’ Thinking, he observed, is an active, vital, dynamic process full of adventure and excitement, while thought is the end of this process, both its fruit and its demise unless the thought arrived at by thinking leads to more thinking.” ¹ In our opinion, however, thinking is the internal basis of action, while action is the external result of thinking. With this reasoning, a certain way of thinking must relate to a certain way of acting. Therefore, modes of thinking must affect decision making and behavior norms. We will discuss how traditional modes of thinking influence Chinese decision making in this part.