Instant Theory: Making Thinking Popular

Abstract

"Instant Theory: making thinking popular" investigates the possibility of a public theory. A public theory would increase access to strategies and infor-mation on learning and innovation and allow domains of knowledge to preserve and disseminate potential inventions. The essay explains the successes and failures of a previous attempt at popularizing thinking in the form of pattern recognition and puzzle solving. This previous attempt by the concrete poets guides the essay in exploring the other articles in this issue which explore alternative systems for representing our knowledge. In terms of these alternatives, the author argues that each of the other articles offers a clue to building a cultural setting for the spread of ideas and proliferation of inventions. That setting includes the possibility of dissolving accumulated theories into thinking-images. Among the many characteristics of thinking-images discovered in the other articles, are rhizomatic imaging, potential encyclopedic associations, relay I delay structures, impasses in meanings and perceptions, montaged found materials, syntactic play, and linguistic cross-ings (e.g., puns, names as nouns, etc.). These characteristics do not function as qualities in some correct form nor in a competent reader, but as guides for research, invention, and conservation of the (im)possible