Thinking requires raw material

From Aidan Chambers' Booktalk: Occasional Writing on Literature and Children. I think he is right. Reflection and consideration are intensely individual in nature but the broader process of thinking is an unconciously collaborative one. We all stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before; our thoughts both advantaged from the prospect but also hostage as well.

Like every other creative activity, thinking requires raw material. I don't know about you, but I find I can never get enough raw material of my own. I take most of what I need from other people. On my own I am just not enough - in experience or knowledge or imaginative capacity or language. To put it another way round: thinking isn't really a self-contained, individual activity at all. It is a shared process. We are all members of the human think-tank.