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Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less Paperback – Illustrated, December 8, 1999

4.4 out of 5 stars 85

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In these accelerated times, our decisive and businesslike ways of thinking are unprepared for ambiguity, paradox, and sleeping on it." We assume that the quick-thinking "hare brain" will beat out the slower Intuition of the "tortoise mind." However, now research in cognitive science is changing this understanding of the human mind. It suggests that patience and confusion--rather than rigor and certainty--are the essential precursors of wisdom.

With a compelling argument that the mind works best when we trust our unconscious, or "undermind," psychologist Guy Claxton makes an appeal that we be less analytical and let our creativity have free rein. He also encourages reevaluation of society's obsession with results-oriented thinking and problem-solving under pressure. Packed with Interesting anecdotes, a dozen puzzles to test your reasoning, and the latest related research, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind is an Illuminating, uplifting, stimulating read that focuses on a new kind of well-being and cognition.


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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The essential guide to creative thinking!"-- John Cleese "Guy Claxton backs up anecdotal studies of creativity with up-to-date Information about the latest research into brain function. The result is a fascinating book that told me many things I ought to know but didn't." -- Anthony Storr, author of "Solitude: A Return to Self"

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind

How Intelligence Increases When You Think LessBy Claxton, Guy

Ecco

Copyright © 2004 Guy Claxton
All right reserved.

ISBN: 0060955414

Chapter One

Turtle buries its thoughts, like its eggs, in the sand, and allows. the sun to hatch the little ones. Look at the oldfable of the tortoise and the hare, and decide for yourself whether or not you would like to align with Turtle.
Native American Medicine Cards

There is an old Polish saying, 'Sleep faster; we need the pillows', which reminds us that there are some activities which just win not be rushed. They take the time that they take. If you are late for a meeting, you can hurry. If the roast potatoes are slow to brown, you can turn up the oven. But if you try to speed up the baking of meringues, they bum. If you are impatient with the mayonnaise and add the oil too quickly, it curdles. If you start tugging with frustration on a tangled fishing line, the knot just becomes tighter.

The mind, too, works at different speeds. Some of its functions are performed at lightning speed; others take seconds, minutes, hours, days or even years to complete their course. Some can be speeded up -we can become quicker at solving crossword puzzles or doing mental arithmetic. But others cannot be rushed, and if they are, then they will break down, like the mayonnaise, or get tangled up, like the fishing line. 'Think fast; we need the results' may sometimes be as absurd a notion, or at least as counterproductive, as the attempt to cram a night's rest into half the time. We learn, think and know in a variety of different ways, and these modes of the mind operate at different speeds, and are good for different mental jobs. 'He who hesitates is lost', says one proverb. 'Look before you leap', says another. And both are true.

Roughly speaking, the mind possesses three different processing speeds. 'Me first is faster than thought. Some situations demand an unselfconscious, instantaneous reaction. When my motor-bike skidded on a wet manhole cover in London some years ago, my brain and my body immediately choreographed for me an intricate and effective set of movements that enabled me to keep my seat -- and it was only after the action was all over that my conscious mind and my emotions started to catch up. Neither a concert pianist nor an Olympic fencer has time to figure out what to do next. There is a kind of 'intelligence' that works more rapidly than thinking. This mode of fast, physical intelligence could be called our 'wits'. (The five senses were originally known as 'the five wits'.)

'Men there is thought itself -- the sort of intelligence which does involve figuring matters out, weighing up the pros and cons, constructing arguments and solving problems. A mechanic working out why an engine will not fire, a family arguing over the brochures about where to go for next summer's holiday, a scientist trying to interpret an intriguing experimental result, a student wrestling with an examination question: all are employing a way of knowing that relies on reason and logic, on deliberate conscious thinking. We often call this kind of intelligence 'intellect' -- though to make the idea more precise, I shall call it d-mode, where the 'd' stands for 'deliberation'. Someone who is good at solving these sorts of problems we call 'bright' or 'clever'.

But below this, there is another mental register that proceeds more slowly still. It is often less purposeful and clear-cut, more playful, leisurely or dreamy. In this mode we are ruminating or mulling things over, being contemplative or meditative. We may be pondering a problem, rather than earnestly trying to solve it, or just idly watching the world go by. What is going on in the mind may be quite fragmentary. What we are dunking may not make sense. We may even not be aware of much at all. As the English yokel is reported to have said: 'sometimes I sits and thinks, but mostly I just sits'. Perched on a seaside rock, lost in the sound and the motion of the surf, or hovering just on the brink of sleep or waking, we are in a different mental mode from the one we find ourselves in as we plan a meal or dictate a letter. These leisurely, apparently aimless, ways of knowing and experiencing are just as 'intelligent' as the other, faster ones. Allowing the mind time to meander is not a luxury that can safely be cut back as life or -work gets more demanding. On the contrary, thinking slowly is a vital part of the cognitive armamentarium. We need the tortoise mind just as much as we need the hare brain.

Some kinds of everyday predicament are better, more effectively approached with a slow mind. Some mysteries can only be penetrated with a relaxed, unquesting mental attitude. Some kinds of understanding simply refuse to come when they are called. As the Tao Te Ching puts it:

Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.

Those who are bound by desire see only the outward container.

Recent scientific evidence shows convincingly that the more patient, less deliberate modes of mind are particularly suited to making sense of situations that are intricate, shadowy or ill defined. Deliberate thinking, d-mode, works well when the problem it is facing is easily conceptualised. When we are trying to decide where to spend our holidays, it may well be perfectly obvious what the parameters are: how much we can afford, when we can get away, what kinds of things we enjoy doing, and so on. But when we are not sure what needs to be taken into account, or even which questions to pose -- or when the issue is too subtle to be captured by the familiar categories of conscious thought -- we need recourse to the tortoise mind. If the problem is not whether to go to Turkey or Greece, but how best to manage a difficult group of people at work, or whether to give up being a manager completely and retrain as a teacher, we may be better advised to sit quietly and ponder than to search frantically for explanations and solutions.

Continues...
Excerpted from Hare Brain, Tortoise Mindby Claxton, Guy Copyright © 2004 by Guy Claxton. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ecco; Illustrated edition (December 8, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060955414
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060955410
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.62 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 85

About the author

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Guy Claxton
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Guy Claxton is Emeritus Professor at Winchester University and Visiting Professor of Education at King’s College London. He has previously taught and researched at Oxford University, Bristol University, and the University of London Institute of Education, and is an internationally renowned cognitive scientist. Guy’s books include `Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind`; `Wise Up: The Challenge of Lifelong Learning`; `The Wayward Mind`; and `Intelligence in the Flesh`. Recent books on education include `What’s the Point of School?`; `Building Learning Power`; and, with` Bill Lucas and others, `New Kinds of Smart`;` The Learning Powered School; and `Educating Ruby`. Guy’s Building Learning Power approach to teaching is widely used in all kinds of schools across the UK, as well as in Poland, Dubai, Indonesia, India, China, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
85 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2017
I finished reading this book with an armful of “aha’s!” and one question: Why hasn’t this book been the number one bestseller since its publication in May of 2016? It is beyond transformative and that it is not universally acknowledged to be is the best evidence I can offer as to why it should be.

Mr. Claxton is a cognitive scientist, in his own words, but apparently has a strong professional background in the psychology of learning, and at least a passing interest in Eastern philosophy.

The premise of this book is both brilliant and fairly straightforward, although it is always presumptuous of a reader to stake that claim. Claxton makes a convincing scientific case that the “scientific” perspective—what he calls the “d-mode” (deliberate)—has come to totally dominate our social, commercial, and educational institutions. And while he does not reject this development out of hand, he does make a strong case that the perspective is incomplete and has caused us to overlook the essential humanity and importance of the unconscious—what he calls the “undermind,” the place where intuition, contemplation, and instinct reside.

The undermind is not the Freudian subconscious, but is the vast area of thought that is not consciously recognized or understood. This is the tortoise part of thought where slow thinking—slow knowing as he refers to it—is the most effective, and often the only, path to truth. Speed, in these cases—or hareful thinking (my own phrase)—is not just ineffective, but counter-productive. If it is truth that we’re after, the hare, in these cases, is a red herring.

Claxton proffers that conscious rational thought and underminded thinking are ideally suited to different problems. As in the case of the Chinese notion of yin and yang, they are complementary, not opposing, modes of thought. One, in fact, cannot exist without the other. (He does not directly make the comparison, to be fair.)

There are many ramifications of the one-dimensional pre-occupation we see today. In the world of business, companies have essentially sterilized themselves, finding themselves incapable of timely innovation in fast-paced markets that demand it. For the same reason, moreover, they have destroyed any sense of engagement and belonging in the workplace, stifling both creativity and productivity in the process.

My own gestalt in this area while reading this book was that this pre-occupation with conscious reason—big data, statistical analysis, talent management, and financial modeling—is the reason why the work/life question is in the forefront of so many corporate minds, particularly among the young. If we accept the value of tortoise-knowing, the question literally evaporates. We can even work, as I did some four decades ago, in our sleep, without the stress felt today due to our blind focus on deductive reason and the false confidence we place in fast decisions.

Claxton is even more concerned, and on point, when it comes to education. We are not preparing our children for a life of learning. We are preparing them to perform on standardized testing, or convincing them that their “abilities” are fixed and cannot be improved upon. Both are unproductive and ultimately inhumane outcomes. We are setting our children up (I have two daughters in high school.) both for failure and for a life of angst and anxiety as they struggle to remain connected in a meaningful way to the world around them.

While he doesn’t address these issues directly, I do believe that Claxton has also uncovered a significant root cause of the political division, and the struggle around class, race, gender, and sexual identity that is tearing the very fabric of Western society apart today.

The reason is outside the peripheral vision of the hare, but within the sweeping visual arc of the attentive but subconscious tortoise. When we see conscious rationality as both exclusive and all-inclusive, as the hare does, it is a short hop from “I am right,” to, “You are wrong.” There can, as a result, be no diversity at any level.

So who would this book benefit? If you ask the hare you will get a short list in return. If you ask the tortoise, however, you will see the value of this book to business people, political leaders, educators, parents, and adolescents. I can’t think of anyone, in fact, who would not benefit from this book.

I do not know Mr. Claxton and never heard of him or this book before stumbling across it in the Kindle deal section. I am a voracious reader and was running out of money to satiate my appetite now that $15 is not an uncommon price for a Kindle book. This book was a steal by comparison but is one of the most powerful and thought-provoking books I’ve read this year.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2013
I first learned of this book while reading a Fast Company article interviewing the inimitable John Cleese on Creativity (indeed, his quote "the essential guide to creative thinking" sits on the bottom righthand corner of the cover). Subtitled "How intelligence increases when you think less," this fascinating book is not an easy read. I must confess that I had some issues with the author's take on the evolution of thought as well as some of the applied meditation and wisdom theories, but there is still much to be gained from making it through to the end.

Providing a strong case for the use of what he calls the "undermind," psychologist Claxton provides study after study to demonstrate how much we can gain by going beyond what he calls "d-mode thinking" - the analytical, one answer approach that says thinking harder is the best way to solve every problem. If you cannot, you are simply not bright enough. D-mode thinking, elevated and enhanced by the computer age, has its application, but for many more complex problems it simply will not provide the best results, if any at all. Some of its shortcomings include valuing answers more than questions, explanation over observation, reason over intuition, and is much more purposeful and effortful than playful. Fascinating chapters include Learning by Osmosis, Having an Idea, Knowing More Than We Think, Thinking Too Much, Perception Without Consciousness, Paying Attention and The Undermind Society: Putting the Tortoise to Work.

Early in his book Claxton provides this guidance on thinking fast or slow: "Whether to back the hare or the tortoise depends crucially on the nature of the situation. If it is complex, unfamiliar, or behaves unexpectedly, tortoise mind is the better bet. If it is a nice logical puzzle, try the hare brain first."

This is a challenging book to ingest, but the patient reader can glean much about balancing reason (which does have its place) and intution (typically present in all of us at a young age, effectively drilled out of many of us by young adulthood through concentration on knowing rather than acquiring know-how). Claxton's concern, demonstrated in the words of the German composer Conradin Kreuter in 1955 as he described the difference between "calculative" and "meditative" thinking is that "calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practised as the only way of thinking.... Then man would have denied and thrown away his own special nature - that he is a meditative being."

In the final chapter of this extraordinary book - The Undermind Society - the author posits the creation of work places and situations where the value of intutions and the nature of the mental modes that produce them are clearly understood by all, especially leaders who both support and practice "slow learning." Providing workers with some autonomy and control over their work and environment will allow them to feel "safe" to be more innovative and intuitive.

Claxton closes with these thoughts: "The voices of philosophy, poetry and imagery are relatively weak in a world that largely assumes that only science and reason speak with true authority.... The hare brain has had a good run for its money. Now it is time to give the tortoise mind its due."
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Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2023
I enjoyed reading this thought-provoking book during my off time. It's a steal for the price! Probably not a book for kids or adolescents though.
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2003
The author takes gutsy stands. He considers the "Left brain Right brain" concept obsolete. According to his research, the mind's skill set is a lot more fluid than that. Everything the left brain can do, the right brain can do to, and vice versa.
His theory focuses on two main thinking modes:
1) intellect (d-mode); and
2) intuition (undermind).
He believes that optimal cognition is reached through a balance between these two modes of thinking. One is not better than the other. Thinking modes can be used in effective sequences.
He indicates that many challenging problem solving situations can be tackled through four stages of thinking:
1) Preparation in D-Mode,
2) Incubation in intuitive mode,
3) Illumination in intuitive mode, and
4) Verification in the D-mode.
The above is a good description of the scientific method from a psychological framework. This approach will help you out in both school, and business situations.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2017
a book that will change your thinking--about thinking. well written, superbly organized, the author presents a strong case for his thesis about the ways in which the conscious and unconscious activities of our minds interact. this book was a selection of our book club, and it was very well received by the members. all felt they learned something from it--no the same thing in all cases.
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Top reviews from other countries

Lamondi
2.0 out of 5 stars Very hard to follow, I read a lot of ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2016
Very hard to follow, I read a lot of books but just could not get into this, had to abandon it which is not something I usually do