This paper examines the characteristics of the thinking skill we call “melioration” i.e., the competence to borrow a concept from a field of knowledge supposedly far removed from his or her domain, and adapt it to a pressing challenge in an area of personal knowledge or interest. The skill has its source in conscious personal meaning-making, not in the process of deduction. In the unplanned operation of connection and association, one creates a new concept generating a new insight into a phenomenon, which hitherto had not been described in such a way. This paper relates melioration to existing theories of intelligence, taking the position that human cognitive/intellectual functioning is in part the ability to learn or think in the framework of familiar systemic concepts, and in part the ability to learn or think with new systemic concepts that are then available for future application.
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