[WayneS]

I agree.

“Outside the box” does not necessarily equal “irrational”.

[Flick Lives]

Perhaps a better word is unconventional thinking. Something which is increasing hard to do in an age where government funding of so-called science has created fiefdoms more interested in protecting their government grant than in scientific discovery.

[Swordmaker]

“Outside the box” does not necessarily equal “irrational”.

General Semanticist Alfred Korzybski in "Science and Sanity, an introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics," defined it as one of the difference between "Aristotelian" and "Non-Aristotelian" thinking.

• Aristotelian thinking is that in any field A leads to B which leads to C so on and that was how you advance knowledge. One can deduce everything from merely knowing its predecessors.

• Non-Aristotelian thinking allows for the leaps of intuition, the flashes of genius, to leap from A to D without the intervening steps, or to borrow from another field entirely and see the relationship to create another field of thought or exploration. One has to actually go and look, experiment, and assure that thought comports with those observations. i.e. the Map is not the territory.