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.”
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