Thinking with Diagrams

Thinking with Diagrams
Author: Sybille Krämer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2016-07-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1501503685

Diagrammatic reasoning is crucial for human cognition. It is hard to think of any forms of science or knowledge without the "intermediary world" of diagrams and diagrammatic representation in thought experiments and/or processes, manifested in forms as divers as notes, tables, schemata, graphs, drawings and maps. Despite their phenomenological and structural-functional differences, these forms of representation share a number of important attributes and epistemic functions. Combining aspects of linguistic and pictorial symbolism, diagrams go beyond the traditional distinction between language and image. They do not only represent, yet intervene in what is represented. Their spatiality, materiality and operativity establish a dynamic tool to exteriorize thinking, thus contributing to the idea of the extended mind. They foster imagination and problem solving, facilitate orientation in knowledge spaces and the discovery of unsuspected relationships. How can the diagrammatic nature of cognitive and knowledge practices be theorized historically as well as systematically? This is what this volume explores by investigating the semiotic dimension of diagrams as to knowledge, information and reasoning, e.g., the 'thing-ness' of diagrams in the history of art, the range of diagrammatic reasoning in logic, mathematics, philosophy and the sciences in general, including the knowledge function of maps.

Thinking Diagrams

Thinking Diagrams
Author: Mickey Kolis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2016-07-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1475828691

Higher-order thinking questions (and their answers) are considered by many to be the holy grail of teaching. Teachers know when students “get it”, but the question remains “How do you teach students to think explicitly and intentionally?” This book uses a series of diagrams to make thinking explicit by using students’ personal experiences as the foundation for their thinking. Thinking Diagrams will help the reader move beyond understanding what metacognition is to teaching students how to understand their thinking in visual form. This book is filled with contemporary and practical insights regarding helping teachers of all levels foster classrooms rich in student thinking, creativity, and learning.

Thinking with Diagrams

Thinking with Diagrams
Author: Alan F. Blackwell
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2013-04-18
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9401735247

This book provides an introductory overview of the rapid growth in interdisciplinary research into Thinking with Diagrams. Diagrammatic representations are becoming more common in everyday human experience, yet they offer unique challenges to cognitive science research. Neither linguistic nor perceptual theories are sufficient to completely explain their advantages and applications. These research challenges may be part of the reason why so many diagrams are badly designed or badly used. This is ironic when the user interfaces of computer software and the worldwide web are becoming so completely dominated by graphical and diagrammatic representations. This book includes chapters commissioned from leading researchers in the major disciplines involved in diagrams research. They review the philosophical status of diagrams, the cognitive processes involved in their application, and a range of specialist fields in which diagrams are central, including education, architectural design and visual programming languages. The result is immediately relevant to researchers in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, as well as in applied technology areas such as human-computer interaction and information design.

Lines of Thought

Lines of Thought
Author: Ayelet Even-Ezra
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-04-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 022674311X

We think with objects—we conduct our lives surrounded by external devices that help us recall information, calculate, plan, design, make decisions, articulate ideas, and organize the chaos that fills our heads. Medieval scholars learned to think with their pages in a peculiar way: drawing hundreds of tree diagrams. Lines of Thought is the first book to investigate this prevalent but poorly studied notational habit, analyzing the practice from linguistic and cognitive perspectives and studying its application across theology, philosophy, law, and medicine. These diagrams not only allow a glimpse into the thinking practices of the past but also constitute a chapter in the history of how people learned to rely on external devices—from stone to parchment to slide rules to smartphones—for recording, storing, and processing information. Beautifully illustrated throughout with previously unstudied and unedited diagrams, Lines of Thought is a historical overview of an important cognitive habit, providing a new window into the world of medieval scholars and their patterns of thinking.

The Logical Thinking Process

The Logical Thinking Process
Author: H. William Dettmer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Decision support systems
ISBN: 9780873897235

'A major rewrite of Dettmer's classic Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, this new edition presents a whole new approach to building and applying logic trees. The logical thinking process referred to in the title is nothing less than a broadly applicable, systems-level approach to policy analysis. Dettmer has streamlined the process of constructing the logic trees while simultaneously ensuring that the results are more logically sound and closer representations of reality than ever before. He explains an easier, more logically sound way to integrate Current Reality Trees with Evaporating Clouds. His new version of the thinking process "retires" the Transition Tree in favor of the marriage of a more detailed Prerequisite Tree and critical chain project management. This book contains new examples of logic trees from a variety of real-world applications. Most of the diagrams and illustrations are new and improved. Explanations and procedures for constructing the logic trees are considerably simplified.

Growing Wings on the Way

Growing Wings on the Way
Author: Rosalind Armson
Publisher: Triarchy Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2011-05-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1908009292

This book is about dealing with messes. Sometimes known as 'wicked problems', messes (or messy situations) are fairly easy to spot:it's hard to know where to startwe can't define them everything seems to connect to everything else and depends on something else having been done first we get in a muddle thinking about them we often try to ignore some aspect/s of themwhen we finally do something about them, they usually get worse they're so entangled that our first mistake is usually to try and fix them as we would fix a simple problem.

Cogwheels of the Mind

Cogwheels of the Mind
Author: A. W. F. Edwards
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2004-05-10
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780801874345

For anyone interested in mathematics or its history, Cogwheels of the Mind is invaluable and compelling reading.

Thinking in Images

Thinking in Images
Author: Piotr Kozak
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2023-04-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350267481

What does it mean to think with images? There is a well-established tradition of studying thought processes through the nature of language, and we know much more about thinking with language than about thinking with images. Piotr Kozak takes an important step towards rectifying this position. Presenting a unified theory of different types of images, such as diagrams, maps, technical drawings and photographs, Kozak argues that images provide a genuine and autonomous form of content and knowledge. In contrast to the propositional view of thinking and resemblance-based accounts, he puts forward a measurement-theoretic account of images as operations that exemplify measures, revealing the outcomes of measurement operations performed on a depicted situation. Bringing together insights from philosophy of science, picture-theory, cognitive science and cognitive psychology, this book demonstrates that we can only understand what an image is if we truly understand the role they play in our thought processes, challenging the prevailing view that the utility of images is only instrumental and cognitively inferior.

Thinking in Systems

Thinking in Systems
Author: Donella Meadows
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008-12-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1603581480

The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

The Logical Status of Diagrams

The Logical Status of Diagrams
Author: Sun-Joo Shin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 211
Release: 1994
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 052146157X

The validity of the transformation rules ensures that the correct application of the rules will not lead to fallacies. The book concludes with a discussion of some fundamental differences between graphical systems and linguistic systems.