Being a comprehensive thinker isn’t really a big new idea. It’s an umbrella concept that pulls together the many ways we’ve learned to understand our world and our universe.
In the Marvel movie Dr. Strange, the ancient one shows Stephen Strange a book with an illustration of the chakras, then acupuncture, and last an MRI scan. She explains: “Each of those maps was drawn up by someone who could see in part, but not the whole.”
She was referring to the mystic arts, but the same is true of much of our more mundane knowledge. Specialization keeps us from seeing the whole.
Comprehensive thinking is an attempt to integrate what we have learned about Universe, including science, complexity, systems theory, synergetics, design thinking, and many other areas of knowledge, to gain a clearer understanding of our world and how to make it work for everyone.
We’re not trying understand everything. We’re trying to put in order the facts of our experience and knowledge in such a way that it’s more accurate, flexible, integrated and expansive.
It occurs to me that it might be useful to list the many concepts and areas of knowledge related to comprehensive thinking. It might serve as a kind of guide for studying comprehensive thinking.
I’ve started a new open artifacts project with that goal. Check it out.
