ABSTRACT
A cynical judgement of the recent history of the psychology of thinking would be to say that the ever-increasing number of investigations into such matters as the development of intelligence, concept formation, problem-solving, reasoning, and creative thinking is evidence of commendable zeal, but, since these lines of inquiry have remained largely independent, no overall progress has been made; like Stephen Leacock's Lord Ronald, we have flung ourselves on our horses to ride madly off in all directions. This view appears to have some justification from the fact that the different traditions of theory and research which have been established are so readily identifiable. We are, then, confronted with a variety of perspectives, each of which focuses characteristically upon certain problems. For example, work within the Piagetian tradition is mainly concerned with the development of logical thinking, while stimulus-response theory has provided the language for the bulk of investigations into concept formation. Or again, many students of reasoning and problem-solving interpret their findings in the language of information-processing, a language which they believe is equally applicable to the activities of men and computers, but studies of creative thinking and of the relationship between language and thought suggest the fruitfulness of a phenomenological analysis of conscious experience. In the face of this diversity of interpretations, is not the only possible conclusion that we are still far away from a systematic psychology of thinking?
