[From the archives: 1996]
Edward de Bono: Movement, lateral thinking, provocation, "po", six thinking hats, wisdom

Topics covered include:

• About Textbook of Wisdom - Edward De Bono’s 55th book
• How Chinese technology was far advanced - way beyond that of the West - 2000 years ago.  But Chinese technological progress then came to a dead end.  Why?
• What has been the driving force of Western science?
• The value and importance of play and provocation
• What is “lateral thinking”?
• Humor – how does it tell us more about the human mind than any other behavior?
• What is “po”?  How do you use it?
• Ancient Greek thinkers and their legacy in regard to thinking – their great contribution and its fundamental flaws.  In what way was their contribution insufficient?
• “Parallel thinking” – the 6 Thinking Hats method.
• Why is Australia Edward DeBono’s favorite country?  :-)
• The habits of “wisdom” versus the habits of traditional thinking
• Arrogance versus confidence.  Confidence as the basis of wisdom.
• Thinking as a skill; training and practice of the skill.  Thinking can be fun.
• Traditional approaches to creative thinking – brainstorming and suspending judgment - how they are weak or ineffective.
• Deliberate provocations as aids to creative thinking.
• Professor John Edwards' research into the DeBono methods – the “spread effect” of spending a small amount of time practicing DeBono’s methods.  How the methods can help youngsters to gain confidence in thinking and in their ability to master their learning tasks.
• The “powerful car” analogy.
• “Social inventions”.
• Can we improve on the design of democracy?  Weaknesses of democracy.  DeBono’s idea for a new type of democracy.
  
• Plus, original poetry by Anita Sinclair

Guests:
Edward de Bono
Anita Sinclair, Poet