Lateral and vertical thinking

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1.1. Lateral and vertical thinking
Vertical thinking is associated with digging holes in the depth. Lateral thinking is associated with digging wells in some other place.
De Bono (DeBono, 1977. P. 195)

New to the difference between lateral and vertical thinking said Edward de Bono in 1968 (DeBono, 1968). Best of all, it illustrates the old fable, which tells us for several generations.
Long ago, when the debtor's failure to return the money in time, could easily put in jail, a merchant in London had the misfortune to owe the lender a huge sum of money. And the old ugly lender will have a beautiful young daughter of a merchant. And he suggested the deal, said he was simply a merchant of his duty if he would give his daughter. The merchant and his daughter were horrified by this proposal. Then the treacherous shark decided to give them the fate of Providence. He said he put in a bag, one black and one white stone, and the girl would pull one of them. If the stone turns black, she will marry the usurer, and her father will be forgiven all his debt, but if white, then it will remain with his father, and the debt will still be forgiven. If she refuses to pull out the stone, her father would be thrown into prison, and she herself would have to starve. The merchant, which nothing else to do, reluctantly agreed. Together they went into the garden of the merchant, to the path, strewn with stones. Pawnbroker, stooping, began to seek out the right color stones. The girl, from the fear of becoming observant, though, talking at that time with his father, noticed that a usurer put in a sack, two black stones. He then asked the girl to pull the stone and thus decide their fate and the fate of his father.

So you have to place a girl? If you think about this issue carefully, straightforward, and all rules of logic - ie, using vertical thinking, it will not help you. Typical response after a vertical reflection would be: a girl need, or sacrifice themselves or expose the moneylender in the fraud. But here's the solution offers de Bono: the girl to portray awkwardness, and, pulling out a stone, drop it on the track. And then, drawing on the villain's innocent eyes, to propose to define the color of the lost stone, look, what was left. Well, since there remains a black stone, then the lender has no choice as any to admit that she pulled a white stone, or that he was a crook.

Virtually all agree that such a decision could be called unusual, but the only correct one for girls. Lateral thinking is thinking "around" the problem. "Lateral thinking generates ideas and develops them vertical thinking» (DeBono, 1968, pp. 6). Lateral thinking is sometimes used as a synonym for creativity or creation of new ideas, while the vertical thinking is the improvement and development of already existing ideas.

The world-famous detective Sherlock Holmes often used lateral thinking. As proof, we give one of his answers to his faithful assistant Watson. Watson once mention that the dog is unlikely to help the investigation, since the night of the murder she did nothing. For that Sherlock Holmes said that just because the dog did nothing in the night of the murder, she would help him in his investigation, as a sacred duty of dogs barking at the sight of strangers.
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