Personal blind spots are areas that are visible to others but not to you. The developmental challenge of blind spots is that you don't know what you don't know. Like that area in the side mirror of your car where you can't see that truck in the lane next to you, personal blind spots can easily be overlooked because you are completely unaware of their presence. They can be equally dangerous as well. That truck you don't see? It's really there! So are your blind spots. Just because you don't see them, doesn't mean they can't run you over. This is where you need to enlist the help of others. You have to develop a crew of special people, people who are willing to hold up that mirror, who not only know you well enough to see that truck, but who also care enough about you to let you know that it's there.

People commonly make the mistaken assumption that because a person has one type of characteristic, then they automatically have other characteristics which go with it. In one study, university students were given descriptions of a guest lecturer before he spoke to the group. Half the students received a description containing the word ‘warm', the other half were told the speaker was ‘cold'. The guest lecturer then led a discussion, after which the students were asked to give their impressions of him. As expected, there were large differences between the impressions formed by the students, depending upon their original information of the lecturer. It was also found that those students who expected the lecturer to be warm tended to interact with him more. This shows that different expectations not only affect the impressions we form but also our behaviour and the relationship which is formed.

Education must focus on the trunk of the tree of knowledge, revealing the ways in which the branches, twigs, and leaves all emerge from a common core. Tools for thinking stem from this core, providing a common language with which practitioners in different fields may share their experience of the process of innovation and discover links between their creative activities. When the same terms are employed across the curriculum, students begin to link different subjects and classes. If they practice abstracting in writing class, if they work on abstracting in painting or drawing class, and if, in all cases, they call it abstracting, they begin to understand how to think beyond disciplinary boundaries. They see how to transform their thoughts from one mode of conception and expression to another. Linking the disciplines comes naturally when the terms and tools are presented as part of a universal imagination.

People seem to recognize that the arts are cultural activities that draw on (or react against) certain cultural traditions, certain shared understanding, and certain values and ideas that are characteristic of the time and place in which the art is created. In the case of science, however, opinions differ. Some scientists, like the great biologist J. B. S. Haldane, see science in a similar light — as a historical activity that occurs in a particular time and place, and that needs to be understood within that context. Others, however, see science as a purely "objective" pursuit, uninfluenced by the cultural viewpoint and values of those who create it. In describing this view of science, philosopher Hugh Lacey speaks of the belief that there is an underlying order of the world which is simply there to be discovered — the world of pure "fact" stripped of any link with value. The aim of science according to this view is to represent this world of pure "fact", independently of any relationship it might bear contingently to human practices and experiences.

Consider the seemingly simple question How many senses are there? Around 2,370 years ago, Aristotle wrote that there are five, in both humans and animals — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. However, according to the philosopher Fiona Macpherson, there are reasons to doubt it. For a start, Aristotle missed a few in humans: the perception of your own body which is different from touch and the sense of balance which has links to both touch and vision. Other animals have senses that are even harder to categorize. Many vertebrates have a different sense system for detecting odors. Some snakes can detect the body heat of their prey. These examples tell us that "senses cannot be clearly divided into a limited number of specific kinds," Macpherson wrote in The Senses. Instead of trying to push animal senses into Aristotelian buckets, we should study them for what they are.