Evidence: no feeling, no thought

Flip the script.

Past&Vinegar links to an article describing empathy as an innovation method. I've written that positive change - or the exercise of restraint - requires us to feel something toward the object of our thoughts, that our liberty and our biology are inextricably linked, and that empathy can be literally mind changing.

But this Boston.com article goes much, much further, suggesting that emotion makes thought possible.

Ever since Plato, scholars have drawn a clear distinction between thinking and feeling. Cognitive psychology tended to reinforce this divide: emotions were seen as interfering with cognition; they were the antagonists of reason. Now, building on more than a decade of mounting work, researchers have discovered that it is impossible to understand how we think without understanding how we feel.

My emphasis. Cognition is not computation, but far more sensual. Our bodies are more than head transportation.

Somehow I think artists like Twyla Tharp could have told the theorists that.

Wayne