Man cannot survive, as wpimais do, by the guidance of mere percepts. … He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow bis food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available— but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought No percepts and no “instincts” will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave doth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet bis life depends on such knowledge—and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it2
A process of thought is an enormously complex process of identification and integration, which only an individual mind can perform. There is no such thing as a collective brain. Men can learn from one another, but learning requires a process of thought on the part of every individual student. Men can cooperate in the discovery of new knowledge, but such cooperation requires the independent exercise of bis rational faculty by every individual scientist Man is the only living species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; but such transmission requires a process of thought on the part of the individual recipients. As witness, the breakdowns of civilization, the dark ages in the history of mankind’s progress, when the accumulated knowledge of centuries vanished from the lives of men who were unable, unwilling, or forbidden to think.
•Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” in The Virtue of Selfishness.
In order to sustain its life, every living species has follow a certain course of action required by its nature. T action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectu everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind a produced by his effort. Production is the application of r