2018-12-27 | The adventure of thinking – Blog on mental work portrays IWM director
The blog www.wie-bitte-denken-sie.de is dedicated to the adventure of thinking. Well-known mental workers – scientists, artists and authors – and their individual ways of thinking are presented in comprehensive interviews. The features are illustrated by impressive black and white portraits. “With this synthesis, we hope to grasp and experience the originality of the thinkers and their mental endeavours”, says Michael Hellermann, scientific member of the lab Knowledge Construction, who runs the blog together with Cologne photographer Jürgen Naber.
In December, the blogger published a very special portrait: An interview with IWM director Ulrike Cress. “For me thinking has always something to do with constructing – to give meaning to a fact or situation. […] It is like cutting a lane through a jungle”, says the psychologist and head of the lab Knowledge Construction in the interview and reflects her own understanding of what it means to think. What is the difference between pondering and productive thinking and how can we make sure, that our own thoughts do not remain in the infamous filter bubble but enter the world? Those are all questions that are covered in the interview. Cress is convinced that productive thinking needs irritation, the communication with others whose perspective is expansion and corrective to the own thoughts. During the talk, the head of the IWM expresses her thoughts on the significance of digitization and the media in the process of knowledge construction and illuminates the tension between information flood and knowledge, between extending our horizons and narrowing our view. Cress takes the reader on a journey from the individual thoughts to the extension of the working memory by media and explains what this has to do with a dwarf. Read or listen to the interview (German only).