TI全浸Reading 2026-03-18T10:10:24+00:00

全浸阅读=Total Immerse Dynamic eReading=TIDE

导读：Dr. Edward De Bono 是平行思考之父，六顶思考帽子方*论法**的创始人。Lateral Thinking 是在Vertical Thinking的基础上，于60年代发表出来的一种思考方法；The Six Thinking Hats 则是在Lateral Thinking基础上延伸发展的一套方*论法**工具；此工具于80年代中期发表后横扫企业界管理界和教育界，Dr. Bono每年要飞行25万英里，向雀巢、IBM、博世、西门子、Prudential和Merck等国际公司提供咨询和培训。

"The main difficulty of thinking is confusion," writes Edward de Bono, long recognized as the foremost international authority on conceptual thinking and on the teaching of thinking as a skill. "We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, and creativity all crowd in on us. It is like juggling with too many balls."

读人如读书，通过大师的生平，我们也学习一下他的思考方式。

选自-2021-0619-TE

Edward de Bono

Seeing Problems Sideways on

The father of lateral thinking and “Six Thinking Hats”

P1

THE LETTER was unexpected, but not undeserved. It contained an invitation to a Symposium in Athens. Over the years Edward de Bono had been to hundreds of these affairs. Some were seminars, some consultations or lecturing, all based on his much-acclaimed books. He had produced 70 of them, including “How To Be More Interesting”, “How To Have a Beautiful Mind”, “Edward de Bono’s Textbook of Wisdom” and “Think! Before It’s Too Late”. That last was the message he carried loud and clear as he jetted from city to city and boardroom to boardroom. He was teaching the world a new way of thought, the most important for 2,300 years.

unexpected vs undeserved，用一个双头韵开场；这种用法值得marked and charted. unexpected是一个好词，因为读者喜欢，没有人在routine daily life 里面不希望看到unexpected的小东西，even it may not be big enough to surprise； 什么unexpected 呢？an invitation letter;

写一个思维大师的一生，作者为什么要用一封邀请信开场？Edward jetted(fly) from city to city, boardroom to boardroom, 参加过hundreds of affairs，为和对一封邀请信如此看重？与目的地有关，因为这是一封邀请他去雅典的研讨。

希腊雅典的会饮symposium[banquet, convival party]，2300年前曾经是人类思维与哲学思想的高峰脑力激荡会，是整个人类文明的stepstone；而希腊古典哲学三剑客的思想，既是vertical thinking的milestone，也是Edward De Bono 的Lateral Thinking 的treadstone.

作者手里仿佛拿着一根针，而这一封unexpected的invitation letter，如一根线，穿过时间的针眼，回到2300年，把一个现代思想家与古希腊三贤链接，从而为Dr. De Bono的一生总结定下了维度和参照： he was teaching the world a new way of thought, the most important for 2300 years.

这样的开场如四两拨千斤，举重若轻。

P2

A gathering in Greece was alluring. He was a man of the Mediterranean himself, born in Malta to a family boasting seven generations of doctors. On his mother’s side, he was possibly descended from Napoleon. It was at school that he was first called “Genius” and allowed to skip years. From there he sailed into both Oxford and Cambridge, to do two doctorates and several years of research into physiology and psychology. His study of self-organising systems such as the kidneys and the glands convinced him that the brain, too, could be organised differently. It could be taught to operate creatively, surprisingly and “outside the box”. His preferred term was “lateral thinking”. With that, he had made the most important discovery since the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the infamous Gang of Three, as he called them. It was they who had sent the invitation. They were eager, like all the rest, to consult him.

Dr. De Bono出身医生世家， A family boasting seven generations of doctors. 他一生拥有4个学位，皇家马耳他大学取得医学学位,牛津大学取得心理学及生理学的荣誉学位，及医科哲学博士（D.Phil.）,剑桥大学取得另一个哲学博士；他的灵感来自对*体器人官**（kidneys and glands）的研究，觉得大脑也有搞头, 从而鼓捣出了自希腊三贤(infamous Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)的vertical thinking 后最被世人认同的lateral thinking. 最后回应上文的invitation letter， Edward认为这封信是冥冥中的三贤发给他的信息，they were eager to consult him. 这最后一句的虚拟语气神叨叨得让人发虚，不禁想起《李尔王》森林中的三女巫，《冰与火之歌》中的红发wizard，看来全世界都相信宿命，真是吗？

P3

And he had much to say to those gentlemen. Centuries since, they had imposed on Western brains the tyranny of vertical thinking. That method proceeded by pure logic. At every step, one had to be right. It was characterised by conflict, argument, arrogance and rejection of unusual ideas. In schools, it wasted two-thirds of society’s natural talent. The concepts it laid down hardened into inadequate or over-complex ways of doing things. There was nothing inherently wrong with logical thinking, as there was nothing inherently wrong with the forward gears on a car. But reverse gear was needed too, to rearrange the pattern or get out of a blind alley. An example: waste from a factory is polluting water for people downstream. You could install expensive filtration, or re

house the people. Or you could require the factory to take its own water from downstream. Simplicity itself, and perfect sense.

这一段简明地介绍了Lateral Thinking的几个核心概念：not pure logic, not necessary have to right in every step, not interfered by conflict, argument, arrogance and rejection, doing things not in over-complex ways.

用词也精到， impose on, 想想昨天那篇网络骑劫中的impinge on[have a good/bad influence on]；the tyranny of vertical thinking, tyranny=oppressive power, unfree, unjust act; 被某种思想主义所控制. harden into over-complex ways of doing things 对应僵化和 生搬硬套；还有这一句精彩的类比analogy: nothing inherently wrong with...., as there was nothing inherently wrong with the ...

最后的工厂排水的例子，个人觉得还不如《让*弹子**飞》里面的例子来得贴切:只剩几个人的 张麻子，用vertical thinking是怎么也干不过兵强马壮的黄老爷的；咋办呢？把替身给砍头示众了，去掉了民众心中的恐惧，这事就办成了。

P4

As soon as he proposed his method, in “The Mechanism of Mind” (1969), it caught on like wildfire. Lateral thinking was taken up by Siemens, DuPont, Goldman Sachs, BT, BAand Federal Express, among many. (At Siemens, product-development time fell by half.) It was adopted in schools from Venezuela to Australia to China. In Britain he was brought in in 1998 to shake up the hidebound and exclusive civil service. During the Soviet Union’s perestroika, his books were top reading in Moscow. A seminar on his system for the Australian cricket team led to the total thrashing of England in the Ashes series. His detractors, silly little idiots, held that nothing in his method was new and most of it obvious. The brilliant results spoke for themselves. So did the flow of seekers to his online Effective Thinking course, his Practical Thinking Training courses (with, in 1995, more than 400 instructors in 27 countries) and his World Academy of New Thinking in Malta. He made a very decent living from it all.

caught on like wildfire 野火烧不尽春风吹又生; 他的思想横扫欧亚大陆, shake up the hidebound and exclusive civil service, 连英国死板而又排外的civil service也被shake up. 甚至在体育界，the total thrashing[beat with stick or whip] of可以算是按在地上摩擦了；当然也会有反对者，detractor[slander/belittler], held that nothing was new and most obvious, 这是文化常态，公理之所以成为公理本来就在世界中存在，只是被发现整理发表后，silly little idiots就会出来说话。当然，the results spoke for themselves。

P5

Nonetheless, it might be hard to impress the Gang of Three with them. Pupils at the original Symposium had been overwhelmed by the vertical thinking of Socrates. “Absolutely”, “Of course”, and “Naturally not”, they had answered, not daring to risk the put-down of a “No”. The de Bono method, by contrast, proposed “Po”. This was a language laxative, a provocation thrown into a discussion to loosen things up. It might even be nonsense on its face, such as “Po: Why are wheels round?” Or it might put two things side by side, a caterpillar and a horse, or food and a shoe, to see what thoughts arose from this rearranging. All would be assumed to have value. There was no “No”. Another example might occur in a discussion about picking apples. Rather than arduously reaching up to pick, why not attract the apples to the ground? Or remove the trees from the apples? Well worth exploring.

高手总会论剑，冲突总会confrontation；习惯了absolute, of course and no的vertical thinking派不会轻易接受lateral thinking；因为它是a language laxative[loosen/relax], nonsense on its face, and there was no “NO”；"rearrange things side by side", 这是平行思考的核心关键词，所以为何标题后面的全文highlights是seeing problems sideways on. 绕开问题的dead lock，旁敲侧击，连摘苹果也不用那么 ardurously， with less effort.

P6

All things considered, though, his best bet for this new Symposium was a talk on his Six Thinking Hats. He could take a set along, six toppers in good strong colours. The thinking behind the hats was to make meetings quicker and more productive by taking ego out of them. Instead, those attending wore hats to grasp other points of view. A black hat stood for caution and realism. White meant facts. Green was for creativity, red for feelings, blue for process. Yellow signalled optimism. Trivial, said the idiots again. But major corporations the world over found it shortened meeting times by half. Thousands of schools used it to make debate civilised. In the platinum mines of South Africa, illiterate workers from 14 different tribes learned from it to get on together. In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf was moved by it to talk peace with India. No doubt it had uses, too, in the Middle East, though his neatest lateral solution in that case was to ship out Marmite yeast extract to both Arabs and Israelis, to increase the zinc in their diets and thus make them less irritable with each other.

面对大师，轮到他的6顶帽子出场；又有idiots说trivial[of litttle worth and importance]; 一个简单的工具能make debate civilised, 还能get different tribes on together，那就不是那么trivial了。最后这个例子就有点扯远了，竟然扯到了英国人民的“老干妈” 马麦酱Marmite yeast？！

➤Marmite yeast 马麦酱，盛行于英国、新西兰等的一种酵母酱，英文名Marmite，中文名为“酵母酱”或者“马麦酱”。一种是英国式马麦酱，最初在英国生产，后来又在南非生产；一种是新西兰式马麦酱。马麦酱由酿酒酵母提取物（一种生产啤酒时产生的副产品）制成。

“听说是发酵的臭鞋加狐臭”、“像盐放多了的板蓝根”、“浓缩酱油加酸味”、“初尝时有王致和的风韵”、“有点苦不那么咸的酱油膏”、“满口留香一点不臭，发酵的味道”。更有人直接说马麦酱是“颠覆了三观的难吃”！

不过营养高又富含锌Zinc, 又能make less irritable[annoyed], 各位小伙伴不妨一试。

P8

The thought of the coming Symposium was now much jollier. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would soon be lounging in their hats, eager to hear him. The wine, too, would be flowing, and the flute-girls playing. He might even intrigue them with some of his more speculative lateral thoughts. For example: why not reduce awkward conversations to simple numerical code? So that “This relationship is long dead, we both know it, but we hang on for fear of the unknown” would become “14/4”? Or why not save wine from spoiling by decanting each large jar, on purchase, into smaller screw-top containers? Or (ignoring the gang’s full beards) had they ever thought, while shaving, of keeping the razor still and moving their heads instead? In fact, it worked rather better. Before the evening was out, they too would be toasting his genius. ■

在大家被Marmite yeast熏醉之前，来到了ending. 看来作者YY的好心情一点都没有被发酵的臭鞋加狐臭影响，much jollier[high spirit]; 他开始帮Dr. De Bono安排会饮，甚至还有flute girls. 真的是YY吗？还是作者在给Dr. Edward De Bono践行？一开始接到的invatation letter，是the Gang of the three 从遥远的heaven寄出的吗？能够在雅典完成和古希腊三贤的直接对话，可能是作者觉得对Dr. Edward De Bono最大的敬意了。

♔Take away Today

▷这篇文章的思考方法，是可以借鉴用在语言学习上的，无论词汇表达还是布局谋篇，最终都落在thinking method里面，试试给不同的表达戴上不同颜色的帽子，可能对语言学习又会有了全新的体会。

▷在语言与写作上，这篇文章值得体会的地方太多；比如与思维方式相关的用语；当然，更令人毛骨悚然的是那一封信，其中的隐喻贯穿全文，还能deliver作者的respect，在这里，脱下我的帽子，solute to Dr. Edward De Bono，也solute to the writer.