Or, as Nietzsche put it in an aphorism cited by Oppezzo and Schwartz, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”

I wouldn’t go so far, but the spirit of the sentiment seems true enough. I’ve lately heard a great deal about how writing is a form of thinking. There is a stronger sense in which one could take that claim, but it at least means... See more

Walking lets you read the world — and much like the slow, contemplative mental processes involved in reading a book, the pace with which one moves through the world while walking allows for a different, deliberative kind of seeing . You notice more. You think more.

But no one has ever started over from scratch by devising a wholly new conceptual structure, an entirely new vessel. Why? Because we cannot step outside of our own thought. We think in terms of the conceptual structure that we happen to have. Thought changes from within, step by step, in the harsh and continuous confrontation with its object: reali

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