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A New Tool
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Posted by Hugh Pile
Oct 24, 2007 at 10:44 AM
Posted by Ike Washington
Oct 24, 2007 at 11:57 AM
Flying Logic looks similar to Rationale which I’ve been using since the start of the year to sketch out and analyse problems: http://www.austhink.com/
The site is worth exploring for anyone wanting to find out more about critical thinking.
A useful, slightly out-of-date review here: http://sorted.imakecontent.net/2007/04/26/better-creativity-through-software-using-rationale-to-map-arguments/
Ike
Posted by Franz Grieser
Oct 24, 2007 at 12:05 PM
Hi.
Flying Logic has been discussed in the Scrivener forum (the developer also joined the discussion):
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2496&start=0
There is also a lengthy description of how an German novelist used FL for plotting part of the novel he is working on:
http://forum.flyinglogic.com/index.php?topic=16.0
Franz
Posted by bboyd
Oct 24, 2007 at 01:40 PM
James Fallows, writing in the June 2007 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, discussed Rationale in the last part of an article called “What Was I Thinking.” (He also briefly touches on OneNote, Zoot, The Brain and NoteMap among others.) His favorable remarks about the usefulness of an “argument processor” might apply to Flying Logic as well.
You can find the article on-line, but to read the whole thing you may have to register and/or be a subscriber. Here’s the URL that works for me (but I am a subscriber, so no promises it will work for you):
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200706/digital-judgment
bboyd
Posted by Hugh Pile
Oct 24, 2007 at 03:43 PM
I’d forgotten Rationale and had assumed that Flying Logic was more or less out on its own.
FL appears to score in at least two ways. It adds logical and arithmetic operators to its maps, so that proportional and numerical relationships can be made to flow through the nodes and links. The only other software that I can think of that also does this is a concept-mapping programme with some spreadsheet functions, development now discontinued, whose name I have forgotten but which has been mentioned here before.
The second immediately impressive aspect of the software is the degree of maturity that seems to have been achieved with the first released version. An uncommon amount of work and thought already appears to have been put into it and its documentation.
The price of the software, at least in the most versatile version, is in the DevonThink Pro Office/Curio/TinderBox drawer, and I guess people may find the UI cumbersome or clever according to taste.
It’s interesting, however, that software that appears to have been targeted chiefly at the business operations market seems to have so far created most excitement amongst writers. A good example of the application of a Law of Less Intended Consequences?