Toward Irrational Heuristics: Freeing the Tacit Mode

Abstract

JAMES KINNEY'S RECENT ARTICLE Classifying Heuristics (1979) provides an excellent starting point for a discussion of nonrational heuristics as strategies for prewriting and problem solving. Kinney argues that because intuitive and propositional thinking are both conscious, other classes of heuristics exist besides the systematic type.' Kinney's assertion parallels D. Gordon Rohmann's belief that we need nonrational answers to nonrational questions.2 In the predominately rationalist and objective climate of present academic thought, Kinney's and Rohmann's arguments will doubtless receive indignant response. This may occur even in the field of composition, where the work of intuitive theorists such as Ken Macrorie (1968), Donald Murray (1968), and Peter Elbow (1973) has added much to our knowledge of the processes of thinking, invention, and composing. We have found, however, that even when students apply the prewriting strategies suggested by these authors, their writing may become blocked. For instance, we watched an engineering student attempt to develop a paper on natural-seeming light in a dark, energy-efficient house. Our subject sat in front of her desk, a sheaf of empty paper before her. She muttered and fidgeted and tried several free writes without success. She looked at the ceiling and at the floor, and then haphazardly doodled on her paper. She became angry. Every time I begin writing I waste time, she lamented while pacing aimlessly about the silent room. The paper she wrote was without distinction-a pastiche of quotes from library sources, bland, without synthesis or imagination. Unwittingly, our student had failed to use the tacit irrational heuristics her mind and environment offered her.