What is Deep Thought?

Thinking is done on different levels, and a deep thought doesn't necessarily invalidate or take away the value of an idea that is shallower. Finding a new way to relieve pain can be a wonderful thing, for example, and may be the best solution to a given problem of pain. On the other hand, that is just symptomatic treatment. A true cure is more likely to come from deeper thinking, which in this case might be about the cause of the pain.

The Thousand Mile Hole

by Steve Gillman

A Guide to Deep Thinking

It starts in this way...

In some thick woods, far from the nearest town, in terrain rough enough to hide such things for centuries, a large hole was recently discovered. It was three hundred feet across. The first rocks thrown into it never made a sound from hitting bottom. Others heard about the hole, and scientists eventually came to do some tests. They proved the hole was a thousand miles deep, and maintained the same three-hundred-foot diameter all the way down. Though many people certainly speculated as to the origin, nobody knew how such a uniform and deep hole had formed.

I was wearing a nylon jacket when I hiked out through the woods to see the hole and to possibly write about it. I also wore a small backpack containing a notebook, pens, a small tape recorder, a flashlight, water, snacks, a rain jacket, and few other items. After hours of walking I arrived at the hole late in the morning, and leaned over the edge to peer into the abyss. That's when I slipped and fell.

That is an example of what Albert Einstein called a "thought experiment." It continues with an imaginative exploration of what it might be like to fall for eight hours, knowing you were going to die at the end of the journey (humans reach terminal velocity at around 125 miles-per-hour, and so it takes eight hours to fall a thousand miles). Following the story is a look at how to do your own thought experiments in order to reach more deeply into the nature of things and to have creative insights.

Other chapters cover additional ways to think more deeply and creatively. If you have ever wanted a whole new outlook on reality, and new ways to see, this is the book for you.

Note: At the moment the book is available only as a Kindle version: The Thousand Mile Hole

Other Pages:

About Steve Gillman - A bit of biographical information about myself.
Table of Contents - The chapter list and a short excerpt from the introduction of the book.
The Assumption - How to use and not be used by it.
What is Deep Thinking? - A look at how to measure the relative depth of thoughts.
In Other Words - Choosing other words to have new ideas and understandings.
Deep Thinking - Quotes Worth Pondering - Favorites and some of my own.
Deep Thinking Questions - A look at some examples of how to dig deeper.

A Favorite Quote (changed monthly):

As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect. - Richard Dawkins