Definition as per Wikipedia

Thought (or thinking) encompasses an "aim-oriented flow of ideas and associations that can lead to a reality-oriented conclusion". Although thinking is an activity of an existential value for humans, there is still no consensus as to how it is adequately defined or understood.

Because thought underlies many human actions and interactions, understanding its physical and metaphysical origins and its effects has been a longstanding goal of many academic disciplines including philosophy, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, biology, sociology, and cognitive science.

Thinking allows humans to make sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience, and to make predictions about that world. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, and desires as it makes plans or otherwise attempts to accomplish those goals.

To the Topic

Thoughts are the thing that makes a person, either good or bad. People's behaviors, their's presentation is highly influenced by his/her thoughts. Thinking gave us all these innovations and will be giving in the future. Not only human beings but also each living being thinks. Today what we are is given by thoughts, a progressive, a revolutionary, innovative, many as you wanna name it. 

Daily, you cannot avoid thinking, all of us probably imagine something every second, and an activity you should not miss is thinking. But how do we think? Is there some kind of logic or structure to it? What about the evolution of thought? Are our lives a sum of thinking? And most importantly, how do you think? Intuitively, people tend to think that one or several factors play a crucial role in generating thought, and perhaps there is truth in that idea. However, researchers and the general public are rarely able to access the actual mechanisms and, as a consequence, the actual questions researchers ask of thought are rarely answered. We at CompuServe are going to address these important issues and give an in-depth look at how, when, and why we think to give you an idea of the evolution of thought, but also to reveal its most profound mysteries. A Brief History of Thought It is almost impossible to believe that what we do today was not thought of a couple of millions of years ago. From animals to man, living organisms have been constantly adapting and inventing new ways to be able to survive and thrive. Some of those experiments and discoveries we look upon today as natural, others as abnormal and misguided. Biology has not only been deeply influenced by the evolution of thought, but the concept of an organism is not quite the right term either. For more than a century, scientists have classified living organisms as living in large part due to the interaction of their interactions with their surroundings and their own bodies. Many now wonder, is that really the case? Are we in fact primarily just devices, instrumentalities of the environment, a kind of machine to be set in motion and have control over? Are we more than the sum of our physical parts? Or are we what we are because our environment is what it is? It is, of course, not surprising that a long time has passed before some scientists began to take thought seriously. However, the history of thinking is a relatively recent one, compared to the discoveries that came before. It is one of the more difficult facts of life to wrap our heads around that just a few thousand years ago, people thought there was no way to reason, talk, reflect and make predictions about the future. So, why were thinking and reasoning considered impossible or at least very difficult? For centuries the thinking was considered to be an art that was not easy for humans to learn. Consider: How did human beings come to think of a reason as an art rather than as an academic subject for some budding Ivy League student? The thinking was not originally thought to be part of the great intellectual debate about life, the universe, and everything. Until recently, the idea that most people think by means of reasoning is a new idea, a notion that goes against the grain of the consensus view. Today many scientists think the great thinkers (thinkers as a term applies to a whole group of people) may have been able to think in more complex and sophisticated ways than people currently believe. A basic process One of the things that stands between us and true reasoning is our innate tendency to filter everything we see, hear or think through our personal experience, what we know about the world and a set of outdated and conditioned beliefs. Several factors play a role in how we think about the world. Some of these influences come from our environment, some from within us. It is now widely accepted that some innate features that most of us share allow us to think in a "left brain" manner that is focused on analogies and abstraction, and that our "right brain" is more focused on imagery, imaginative, imagination, and sensory input and our emotional responses. The brain is divided into two hemispheres, one is more active during the thinking process, and one during physical activity. However, more recent research is suggesting that both hemispheres are involved in thinking. It may well be that we are born with some predisposition to think in a way that serves us well. Researchers in the field of psychology often define "thinking" by asking people to engage in a basic process, like counting backward from a number they cannot recall or identifying an unfamiliar object by its unique shape. The goal is to get the person to recall the number or to locate the object in a familiar scene. What this activity does is task people with having to think on a basic, concrete level, using perceptual "tools." When we simply recall the information, we find ourselves being guided more by our active, superficial processing of sensory input rather than a fundamental, introspective approach to learning. Individuals who have the "right brain" are those who can associate a physical object with an emotional feeling, like "that is sad," or see it in a "familiar" way. They find it easier to relate to the object or imagine using it in a way they are unfamiliar with. Not so easy Individuals who have the "left brain" perform a different type of task, one that is more likely to involve imagery and imagery-related thinking. They often ask people to "flashback" or draw on their long-term memory of events and people. The two types of thinking do not work in isolation, but rather as parts of a whole process. It is in how we combine these two types of thinking that the trouble begins, for two reasons. First, and most fundamentally, a lot of thought comes from the intuitive, "feel-based" area of the brain. To discover a pattern in a disorganized environment, we generally turn to these intuitive, emotional thought processes. This is why many people tend to notice patterns in their lives and work. But to explore a new and unfamiliar scenario, a left-brain person will have to bring in their right-brain skills to explore it differently. This takes a lot of effort and focus. Second, and more fundamentally, there is more at stake in having right-brain thinking than left-brain thinking. This is because the right brain is capable of thinking in ideas or ways that cannot be explained by our left brain's "metaphors and analogies." A right-brained person may think in rules or concepts that are "out of the box" and at odds with the assumptions and responses of the rest of society. The left-brain thinkers often find it more difficult to find a "platform" of consensus among other right-brain thinkers and find it more difficult to fit into a given social or cultural milieu. The "right brain" individual can very easily go off in a different direction from the norm. Combining these two hemispheres The beauty of the human brain is that we are innately creative, combining these two competing modes of thought to achieve greater insight. The human brain is a reflection of who we are as an individual. The strong, right-brain thinking that is used to form, reason, and find solutions is an intrinsic part of how we develop as human beings. This is one of the reasons why it is often hard to work with someone whose brain is more left-brained. The two hemispheres need to work together, each creating their unique contributions. The converse, of course, is also true, as someone with left-brained thinking can be more creative than someone with a right-brained style. However, this type of right-brain thinking is less common, as it requires an increased amount of practice and focuses. It is this issue of expression and creativity that seems to be of most interest to the Canadian Writer's Centre and Vancouver Art Gallery. Rather than trying to teach what is "wrong" with the "right brain," or what is right about the "left brain," the Toronto gallery is attempting to explore the creative process through exhibition design. Boom for art-lovers The exhibition designers are to recreate 16 major Canadian artworks like their original creation, as a means to make the works relevant to the viewer's experience. The curator of this exhibit, Eleanor Klein, suggests that artworks can be difficult to comprehend on an intellectual level since it is often more intuitive and intuitive thinking is driven by the right brain. (I'm sure the right brain reading this is having a hissy fit right now. But really, isn't it true? Art is subjective, yes? And that's OK?) My university education focused on the right brain, and I have no trouble understanding its logic. And I believe that the right-brained thinking and creative process has more to do with my imagination than anything else. The difference between a left-brained person and a right-brained person is a spectrum. Interestingly, artists with a strong left-brain make use of both left and right-brained processes in their work. The fact that left-brain thinking has been prioritized over right-brain thinking in most disciplines is one of the reasons why the world seems to be moving in an increasingly left-brain direction. Rather than wait to be told what the right brain should do, we need to make space for the creativity and imagination that the "right brain" should allow for. And we should embrace the potential of both hemispheres.