Critical Thinking and Why It's Critical
By Peter LloydI was blessed with at least the beginnings of a classical education. Blessed sort of literally. In my first two years of college I was thoroughly immersed in the waters of liberal arts at a Catholic seminary. Rhetoric, epistemology, philosophy, metaphysics.
When I say "metaphysics," of course, I refer to the Aristotelian discipline, not newage (rhymes with sewage) gobbledygook. (No one who has struggled to parse definitions of existence would fall for something as ludicrous as individual realities. But then that's just my reality, right?)
I was also dragged over the coals of what most early philosophers and logicians had to say about what we now call critical thinking. I can still spot a logical fallacy two pages away. Unfortunately my early path of college study was untrod by most of my generation and those who followed.
Lately, however, a number of academics at leading schools have "discovered" that critical thinking might be good for everybody. Proponents of teaching critical thinking skills have come back around to the importance of learning how to think. It might be as important, they say, as learning subjects—like statistics, accounting, finance, and management.
There was a time when a liberal arts education, one point of which was to learn how to think, was assumed to be not only worthwhile but essential. My alma mater bucked the trend of discarding the liberal arts and was eventually bought out by a mega-church. Marinate the implications of that for a while.
The Greeks, Chinese, Babylonians, Persians, Romans and critical thinkers right up through the Enlightenment and into our not-so-recent history understood that it's good to learn how to approach problems from a number of perspectives, especially new ones, and to combine possibilities into solutions. That is, instead of trying to solve problems using textbook methods, instructions from a how-to website, a self-help book, or a celebrity profile.
They knew just as well that collecting possibilities doesn't mean making your mind a dumpster for every half-baked notion that comes down the pike. Critical thinking demands that we apply the art of questioning ideas and, especially, assumptions.
In "Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School?" Harvard Business School's David A. Garvin, co-author of Rethinking the M.B.A.: Business Education at a Crossroads is quoted as saying, "I think there’s a feeling that people need to sharpen their thinking skills, whether it’s questioning assumptions, or looking at problems from multiple points of view."
We're not afraid to learn from our competitors when we want to beat them at their game. We call it benchmarking when we want to improve upon a competitor's product. In education we need to benchmark the great thinkers not only to improve innovation and invention but to avoid making ancient mistakes.
Edison, the inventor's inventor, would have recommended what today we call multiculturalism for what it might introduce us to in the way of surprising ideas. Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling advised, "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."
To get lots of ideas, tap lots of cultures, including what we've neglected in our own heritage. To sort through lots of ideas, practice critical analysis. A broader base of ideas give us more creative pickings for great idea combinations. The practice of questioning assumptions will expose vapid ideas and hollow thinking, so we can cut to the stuff we can use.
It seems we've pursued too long practical skills and data that yield immediate cash returns. The great thinkers in our collective heritages have much to teach us. We should sit at their feet again if we want to innovate our way to a better future.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.