introduction

• sir francis bacon noted almost four hundred years ago, wonder-which is the seed knowledge - is the reflection of the purestform of pleasure
• a symbolic system is like a game in that it provides a seperate reality, a world of its own where one can perform actions that are permitted to occur in that world, but that would not make much sense anywhere else. In symbolic systems, the "action" is usually restricted to the mental manipulation of concepts
• contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos
• unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations
• it is understandable that, once on e develops this strategy for overcoming psychic entropy, to give up the habitbecomes almost impossible
• for instance, on of thesimplest ways to use the mind is daydreaming: playing out some sequence of events as mental images
• Jerome Singer, the yale psychologist who has studied daydreaming and mental imagery more than perhaps any other scientist, has shown that daydreaming is a skill that many children never learn to use

the mother of science

• all forms of mental flow depend on memory, either directly or indirectly
• while others need external stimulation - television, reading, conversation, or druges - to keep their minds from drifting into chaos, the person whose memory is stocked with patterns of information is autonomous and self-contained. additionally, sucjh a person is also a much more cherished companion, because she can share the information in her mind, and thus help bring order into the consciousness of those with whom she interacts

rules of the games of the mind

• the building blocks of most symbol systems, words make abstract thinking possible and increase the mind's capacity to store the stimuli it has attended to
• it is important to stress here a fact that is all too often lost sight of: philosophy and science were invented and flourished because thinking is pleasureable
• external forces are very important in determining which new ideas will be selected from among the man available; but they cannot explain their production
• when a person has learned a symbolic system well enough to use it, she has established a portable, self-contained world within the mind
• it is within each person's power to decide whether its order will be restored from the outside, in ways over which we have no control, or whether the order will be the result of an internal pattern that grows organically from our skills and knowledge

the play of words

• it should be argued that the main function of conversation is not to get things accomplished, but to improve the quality of experience
• peter berger and thomas luckman, the influential phenomenological sociologists, have written that our sense of the universe in which we live is held together by conversation
• talking well enriched every interaction, and it is a skill that can be learned by everyone
• the major creative use of language is poetry
• if the only point to writing were to transmit information, then it would deserve to become obsolete. but the point of writing is to create information, not simply to pass it along

befriending clio

• as memory was the mother of culture, clio, "the proclaimer", was her eldest daughter. in greek mythology she was the patroness of history, responsible for keeping orderly accounts of past events
• remembering the past is not only instrumental in the creation and preservation of a personal identity, but it can also be a very enjoyable process

the delights of science

• new discoveries still come to people as they did to Democritus, sitting lost in thought in the market square of his city, they come to people who so enjoy playing with ideas that eventually they stray beyond the limits of what is known, and find themselves exploring an uncharted territory
•  "the fascination of the normal research paradigm... [is that] though its outcome can be anticipated... the way to achieve that outcome remainsvery much in doubt" - Kuhn
• the mental framework that makes science enjoyable is accessible to everyone. it involved curiosity, careful observation, a disciplined way of recording events, and finding ways to tease out the underlying regularities in what one learns. it also requires the humility to be willing to learn from the results of part investigators, coupled with enough skepticism and openness of mind to reject beliefs that are not supported by facts
• if flow, rather than success and recognition, is the measure by which to judge its value, science can contribute immensely to the quality of life

loving wisdom

• "philosophy" use to mean "love of wisdom", and people devoted their lives to it for that reason
• if one records ideas in response to an inner challenge to express clearly the major questions by which one feels confronted, and tries to sketch out answers that will help make sense of one's experiences, then the amateur philosopher will have learned to derive enjoyment from one of the most difficult and rewarding tasks in life

amateurs and professionals

• there are two words whose meanings reflect out somewhat warped attitudes toward levels of comitment to physical or mental activities. These are the terms amateur and dilettante. nowadays these labels are slightly derogatory. an amateur or a dilettante is someone not quite up to par, a person not to be taken very seriously, one whose performance falls short of professionla standards. but originally, "amateur", from the Latin verb amare, "to love", referred to a person who loved what he was doing. similaryly, a "dilettante", from the Latin delectare, "to find delight in", was someone who enjoyed a given activity. the earliest meanings of these words therefore drew attention to experiences rather than accomplishments; they described the subjective rewards they were achieving.
• the point of becoming an amateur scientist is not to compete with professionals on their own turf, but to use a symbolic discipline to extend mental skills, and to create order in consciousness. on that level, amateur sholarship can hold its own, and can be even more effective that its professional counterpart

the challenge of lifelong learning

• but a person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. his thinking will be directed by the opinions of his heighbors, by the editorials in the papers, and by the appeals of television. he will be at the mercy of "experts". ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically. at that point the goal of studying is no longer to make the grade, earn a diploma, and find a good job. rather, it is to understand what is happening around one, to develop a personally meaningful sense of what one's expereince is all about. from that will come the profound joy of the thinker.