I Am Right You Are Wrong: 2from This to the New Renaissance: From Rock Logic to Water Logic

Advocating a perception-based mode of thinking free from rigid rationality, de Bono ( Six Thinking Hats ) hopes this manual will ``signal the start of a New Renaissance.'' He argues that ``our existing thinking culture'' overemphasizes rote logic and simplistic labeling of behaviors as right/wrong or always/never. Deeply suspicious of language as a tool for argument or persuasion, he likens the brain to a ``self-organizing system'' that generates patterns, and he calls for a new ``lateral thinking'' to liberate the mind from the shackles of language-dependent thought. ``Water logic,'' adaptive and imaginative, will replace our confrontational, repetitive ``rock logic.'' This trendy how-to, which reads like a motivational seminar handbook, is full of catchy slogans and mixes byte-size nuggets with questionable assertions (``Humor is by far the most significant behavior of the human mind''). Three Nobel physicists have written forewords to this book, which includes techniques designed to jolt the mind out of familiar ruts. (Dec.)