Thinking Defined
Thinking is a specific, reflective process that links ideas uniquely for each subject.
Thinking is specific, not a machine-like, ready-made apparatus to be turned indifferently and at will upon all subjects, as a lantern may throw its light as it happens upon horses, streets, gardens, trees or river. Thinking is specific in that different things suggest their own appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories and in that they do this in very different ways with different persons. As the growth of the body is through the assimilation of food, so the growth of mind is through the logical organization of subject-matter. Thinking is not like a sausage machine which reduces all materials indifferently to one marketable commodity, but is a power of following up and linking together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse. Accordingly, any subject, from Greek to cooking, and from drawing to mathematics, is intellectual, if intellectual at all, not in its fixt inner structure, but in its function--in its power to start and direct significant inquiry and reflection.--JOHN DEWEY, “How we Think.”