line of thought

• line of thinking

line of thought (plural lines of thought)

1. (figuratively) A specific way of thinking about a particular topic, concept, or problem.
   • 2013, E. J. Lowe, Forms of Thought: A Study in Philosophical Logic, Cambridge University Press, page 31:

     In the present chapter, I want to develop this line of thought in greater detail and at the same time clear up some difficulties that a number of my critics have claimed to find in my account of these matters.

   • 2009, Robert J. Richards, Darwin's place in the history of thought: A reevaluation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol 106:

     Let me approach this line of thought a bit indirectly.

   • 2001, Clifford Geertz, School Building: A Retrospective Preface, from Schools of Thought: Twenty-five Years of Interpretive Social Science, edited by Joan Wallach Scott & Debra Keates, page 1:

     Similarly, to take twenty-five years of free-form, cross-cutting social, political, economic, and historical writing growing out of work at a single, unstandard, American institution and isolate it as an "era" in such writing — a stage, a phase, a line of thought — is to pursue an agenda, take a position, state a case.

2. (figuratively) Way of thinking.
   • 2014, Elise Harris, Pope Francis warns against the dictatorship of narrow thought, Catholic News Agency:

     "Even today there is a dictatorship of a narrow line of thought" which kills "people's freedom, their freedom of conscience," the Pope expressed in his April 10 daily Mass.

• stream of consciousness
• train of thought
• train of thinking