Modern industrial society owed much of its progress as well as its complexity to the scientific and technical advances of the previous century. Wallas recognized both the problems that resulted from these advances as well as the potential for science to revolutionize a society's approach to social policy. He was committed to the study of social issues using the scientific method, and he is credited with undermining the prevailing theories of government that assumed that people's political beliefs and behaviors were based on a rational analysis of their own interests. According to Wallas, such theories failed to take into consideration what had already been learned about human motivation by the psychologists of his time.

Although his work drew attention to the role of emotion and 'instinct' in political behavior, Wallas remained firm in his conviction that effective social policy required careful rational thinking. From one of his earliest books, Human Nature and Politics (1908), to his last, Social Judgment (1934), published posthumously, Wallas emphasized the importance of proactive, innovative thinking in government in contrast to the reactive, intuitive, decision making that he saw as characteristic of an earlier era, but which continued despite the increasing complexity of modern society. Here we find his motivation for writing The Art of Thought (1926), a book intended as a guide to improving the process of creative thinking.

To Wallas, social invention was critical in order to address social problems that he attributed to a a mismatch between human nature and the organization of modern society. In The Art of Thought, Wallas argued for the importance of innovative thinking and asked how it could be achieved. Drawing on his own experience and the subjective accounts of other creative thinkers, he proposed a model of creative thinking and considered ways in which it could be cultivated, both through individual effort and through improvements in the educational system.