"tide of thought" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to talk about a general trend of opinion or thought among a group of people. For example, "The tide of thought among the international community is that stronger gun control laws are needed in order to prevent further tragedies."
By 1745, when the definitive edition of Voltaire's Éléments was published, the tides of thought were turning his way, and by 1750 the perception had become widespread that France had been converted from backward, erroneous Cartesianism to modern, Enlightened Newtonianism thanks to the heroic intellectual efforts of figures like Voltaire.
In this, she speaks of poets (herself included) as belonging to a kind of elite group of visionaries with the power to 'turn the whole tide of human thought'.
In the news pages on Jan . 9 the head over a piece chiefly about Dean voters in Iowa read, "Tide of Second Thoughts Rises Among Democrats".
In turning the tide of mainstream economic thought, Thaler and his colleagues reject the myth of the hyper-rational consumer – "homo economicus" – who are primarily motivated to maximize utility.
But the tide of public opinion shifted.
All this is beginning to turn back the tide of liberal and radical thought of the 1930's and 1940's.
Absent a Chinese or Daoist logic, then, the challenge for a more critical philosophical view is showing that Daoists took a reflective, second level, meta-stance in discussing these issues and how (or whether) the more religious conclusions could survive reflection according to the norms of reasoning enshrined in the philosophical high-tide of the classical period of thought.
Further attention to the structure of hell came during the first centuries of the Common Era, as a rising tide of eschatological thinking, fed by currents of thought from western Asia, swept through the Roman world.
Here's what's missing from the grouch and brainstorm so rife among the dyspeptic tide of liberal resentment: a coherent thought.
All of it recognises the circadian rhythms of the body, quoting such remarks as René Dubos's "the high tides of the ocean may have their counterpart in the high tides of our bloodstream" and FE Halliday's notion that certain types of thought are released by the semi-hypnotic state that verse induces.
