“Open admissions students tend to be highly *oral*. … They can learn the more **literate modes of thinking**, however, but this requires special awareness and effort on the part of their teacher.” www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=EJ108459

“There are subjects that stress a quantitative mode of thinking and the relationship of our ideas to the plasticity of the existential world. The dialogue between the two effects our thinking as we realize the limits of our thoughts as we apply them to the recalcitrance of the world we encounter. Engineering speaks directly to this engagement. Moreover, our academic subjects construct a world. There is a world that physics constructs that is not the world of political science or sociology. There are subjects that stress the **metaphoric and analogical mode of thinking. Literature and poetry teach us and force us to exercise this mode of thought** as a way of investigating and understanding the world.

http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/195/levine_letter.html


--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 hr (2009-12-27 23:43:20 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

То есть мышление метафорами и аналогиями в противовес логическому / математическому образу мышления

"Understanding that *mathematics is founded on reasoning* and is not just a collection of rules to apply is an important message to convey to students. ... we classified explanations according to the** mode of reasoning** used. Seven modes were identified, making a classification scheme which both refined and extended previous schemes. Most textbooks provided explanations for most topics rather than presenting “rules without reasons” but the main purpose appeared to be rule derivation or justification in preparation for practise exercises, rather than using explanations as thinking tools. Textbooks generally did not distinguish between the legitimacies of deductive and other modes of reasoning".
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u080115215h78q15/

...