I often find that wordless thoughts are much more efficient to work with mentally than wordy ones. When you need to communicate, or the thought is intricate or important enough to require a deliberate fleshing out, THEN you write.
Here's an example of a wordless thought: you see a figure that is almost symmetrical and you consider why it isn't exactly symmetrical. It's possible to do this consideration without wording your thought - the reason for asymmetry exists in a wordless form in your mind.
Here's another: you're sitting and you suddenly want to pee. You just get up, go to the bathroom, and pee. The idea of peeing is definitely in your mind when you go to the bathroom - it's rarely explicitly worded out.
Yet another: when you're doing minor re-factoring to your code, much of your thoughts are actually wordless.
I'll appropriate a term from psychology for the process of converting wordless thoughts to wordy ones: focusing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing). Wordless thoughts are basically purely experiential in nature. Wordy ones are deliberate, analytical, and well, wordy. Focusing is the process of converting the former to the latter. You hold the wordless thought in your mind's eye and deliberately covert it into a verbal form.
I am of the opinion that much of philosophy is simply converting wordless thoughts to wordy ones - just as artists are experts in drawing what they see, philosophers are experts in focusing.
My yet another hunch is that experts often think wordlessly about matters their field. It's just too inefficient to word out every thought process.
I often find that wordless thoughts are much more efficient to work with mentally than wordy ones. When you need to communicate, or the thought is intricate or important enough to require a deliberate fleshing out, THEN you write.
Here's an example of a wordless thought: you see a figure that is almost symmetrical and you consider why it isn't exactly symmetrical. It's possible to do this consideration without wording your thought - the reason for asymmetry exists in a wordless form in your mind.
Here's another: you're sitting and you suddenly want to pee. You just get up, go to the bathroom, and pee. The idea of peeing is definitely in your mind when you go to the bathroom - it's rarely explicitly worded out.
Yet another: when you're doing minor re-factoring to your code, much of your thoughts are actually wordless.
I'll appropriate a term from psychology for the process of converting wordless thoughts to wordy ones: focusing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing). Wordless thoughts are basically purely experiential in nature. Wordy ones are deliberate, analytical, and well, wordy. Focusing is the process of converting the former to the latter. You hold the wordless thought in your mind's eye and deliberately covert it into a verbal form.
I am of the opinion that much of philosophy is simply converting wordless thoughts to wordy ones - just as artists are experts in drawing what they see, philosophers are experts in focusing.
My yet another hunch is that experts often think wordlessly about matters their field. It's just too inefficient to word out every thought process.