How Big is a Thought?

What a strange question: How big is a thought? Can have sizes?

We know that a blue whale is larger than the krill on which it feeds. Does that mean that the blue whale thought must be larger, by 100s of thousands of times, than the krill thought? What about the thought of a star and the thought of a quark? Is the thought of the universe the biggest thought of all? If so, is it contained in that sentence, by mere inclusion of the phrase, “thought of the universe”, for that sentence is a small thing, is it not?

I suppose one might as well ask: How many thoughts can you put on the head of a pin, nicely arranged, by category? Now, if one asked that of books, the answer is simple: None, books are each one alone, typically, much larger than a pin head. Now, if we could miniaturize the books—I’m thinking of Nelson Shrinkafeller (scan down the page), an occasional character from the old Li’l Abner cartoon strip . . . .

The size of a book depends on many things, kind and weight of paper, page size, how the type is set, and so forth. But it depends mostly on the number of words. Words represent thoughts, no? Do lots of words imply a big thought, perhaps standing behind them, like the sun rising through the trees, spreading streams of glory through the forest? But what of a telephone book? Lots of words, but nary a thought among them.

If all those questions are born of category mistakes, you say, then how is it that we talk of big ideas? There’s a website called Big Think, presenting “Blogs, Articles and Videos from the World's Top Thinkers and Leaders.” What is it about those thoughts that makes them big? I suppose its their implications. Perhaps a BIG THOUGHT has implications for many other thoughts, brings a new order to them, whereas small and medium-sized thoughts are not so richly linked to other thoughts.

Perhaps we can represent thoughts by networks, like maps. Each atomic thought is a place on the map. These thoughts are connected to one another across the surface of the map. We could then say that thoughts with more connections, with a larger network, are BIGGER than thoughts with few connections.

Here’s a paragraph that’s influenced me a great deal. It’s from the introduction to Constructing Social Theories, by Arthur Stinchcombe, one of my undergraduate teachers.

In my first year of graduate-school, I turned in a paper to Reinhard Bendix called “Rhetorical Opportunities in Some Theories of Social Change.” After some discussion of the substance of the paper, he made a comment that has shaped my attitude toward “theory.” He said, “you know, a little bit of theory goes a long way.” He went on to say I ought to decide what phenomenon I wanted to explain.

If a little bit of it goes a long way, then perhaps theory consists of big thoughts. Yet, if you know anything about the conversations between teachers and students, you know that there’s a bit of kindly irony in that statement. Too much theory chasing too few observations leads to a mess.

But it was the next paragraph that floored me. I would even say it had a considerable impact on the way I conduct my intellectual life, though not in a BIG THINK kind of way.

A second graduate-school conversation, with Philip Selznick, shaped my attitude toward what theory is for. He remarked that one felt satisfied that he understood something when he could summarize in a sentence the guts of a phenomenon. He gave the illustration that he felt satisfied when he realized that the achievement of the Bolshevik parties was “to turn a voluntary association into an administrative apparatus.” To use, as a criterion of judgment, the guts of a phenomenon—what is going on—is better than to use any logical or formal criterion.

There you have it, a single sentences, but the guts of a phenomenon. The blue whale, a single sentence. The krill, a single sentence. A star, a quark, the universe, single sentences all.

But who can write those sentences? Would each expert, whether scientist or poet, write the same sentence? And who to understand them?

Can you do that? A single sentence. Try it.

Take something you understand well, and express that understanding in a single sentence. It need not be a particularly short or pithy one, but it shouldn’t ramble through a dozen clauses netted over 100 words either. If you can’t get there in one swoop, try expressing your understanding in a single paragraph, even a long one of 400 or 500 words. Then distill the paragraph into that one sentence that grabs the guts of the phenomenon.

Now, I ask you: How big is a thought?