The Hole in my Pyjamas

Let thy food be thy medicine (Hippocrates) The year I lived in Japan, a student whom I tutored gave me a book as a leaving present, which had the alluring, though fairly crude title, "The Geography of Thought: How East Asians and Westerners Think Differently… And Why". Written by US psychology professor, Richard E. Nisbett, it addresses the problem in the field of modern psychology, whereby academics frequently make universalist assumptions about a generic human condition. When challenged by a bright Chinese student, he realises study after study has in fact been conducted on Western subjects and more often than not, American psychology students. In the book, he attempts to define how Westerners and Asians have maintained very different systems of thought for thousands of years and how this influences the way people think and approach matters differently. Western thought, descending from Aristotle, values primarily logic and reasoning and tends to focus on particular ...