CRITICAL THINKING AND ITS RELATION
TO SCIENCE AND HUMANISM

Critical Thinking means correct thinking in the pursuit of relevant and reliable knowledge and values about the world.

Critical Thinking is reasonable, reflective, responsible, and skillful thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.

A person who thinks critically can ask appropriate questions, gather relevant information, efficiently and creatively sort through this information, reason logically from this information, and come to reliable and trustworthy conclusions about the world that enable one to live and act successfully in it.

A person who practices Critical Thinking can achieve a productive, successful, ethical, happy, and, ultimately, a satisfying and fulfilling life. I believe it is impossible to achieve self-actualization without practicing critical thinking.

THE COMPONENTS OF CRITICAL THINKING: 

• Focus on Problems and Questions
• Identify problems
• Clarify issues
• Focus on relevant topics and methods
• Rely on Empirical Evidence
• Access relevant data and information
• Be able to manipulate data and statistics
• Be able to validate evidence by repetition
• Avoid wishful, hopeful, and subjective thinking 
• Analyze Arguments
• Judge credibility of a source
• Identify assumptions
• Treat unreliable or odd information skeptically
• Watch out for authoritarian influences
• Watch out for specious arguments
• Use Logical Reasoning
• Understand induction and deduction
• Avoid logical fallacies
• Make value judgements properly
• Act On One's Beliefs
• Consider the other person's point of view
• Be sensitive to the feeling of others
• Judge the morality of one's own actions
• Anticipate the consequences of one's actions

 TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING

Donald Norman, 1980, "Cognitive engineering and education," in Problem Solving and Education:Issues in Teaching and Research, edited by D.T. Tuna and F. Reif, Erlbaum Publishers.

Here is the problem: All education consists of transmitting to students two different things: (1) the subject matter or disciplinary content of the course ("what to think"), and (2) the correct way to understand and evaluate this subject matter ("how to think"). We do an excellent job of transmitting the disciplinary content of our subjects, but we often fail to teach students how to think effectively about this disciplinary content, that is, how to properly understand and evaluate it. This second ability is Critical Thinking.

The problem is so bad that in 1983, in its landmark report A Nation at Risk, the National Commission on Excellence in Education warned:

"Many 17-year-olds do not possess the 'higher-order' intellectual skills we should expect of them. Nearly 40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material; only one-fifth can write a persuasive essay; and only one-third can solve a mathematics problem requiring several steps."

THERE ARE MANY TYPES OF THINKING:
MOST ARE HARMFUL

Critical Thinking Skills are not learned by children or students from peers, by trial and error, or from experience. Such higher-order thinking skills must be taught by parents, primary and secondary school teachers, college instructors, and university professors. Such learning takes place, or is supposed to take place, in homes, schools, colleges, and universities. However, students in the United States rarely learn these skills, and thus they enter adult life without the ability to think critically. Studies show that about 5% of the American adult population are "scientifically literate," that is, they are knowledgeble enough about science that we may assume that they can practice scientific or critical thinking to some extent. I estimate that probably less than 15% possess the ability to practice critical thinking in other everyday areas.

The problem is this: If a child or student does not learn to practice critical thinking, there are many other types of thinking that are available. Most are easier to learn, are more congenial to human nature, and require little effort to practice. These other types of thinking include:

A COMPARISON OF
CRITICAL AND UNCRITICAL THINKING

CRITICAL OR SCIENTIFIC THINKING	UNCRITICAL OR NONSCIENTIFIC THINKING
Results in reliable knowledge (knowledge that has a strong likelihood of being true) or justified true belief (belief that is probably true because it is justified by a proven method).	Results in unreliable knowledge or unjustified belief. This knowledge may be true, but we have no confidence that it is except by faith and hope. Often this knowledge is not true.
Components:	Components:
Logical Thinking Characterized by reliance on correct forms of reasoning that use logic in a proper manner. Premises are reliable and conclusions follow logically.	Illogical Thinking Characterized by fallacious reasoning, specious arguments, false analogies, knowledge claims supported by inadequate or unreliable premises.
Empirical Thinking Relies on objective sensory experience (empirical evidence). Such evidence is repeatable, measurable, and testable by others.	Intuitive Thinking Belief in the superiority of the mind's powers; that knowledge of reality can be obtained by subjective experience or intuition alone.
Pragmatic Thinking Recognizes that wishes and hopes do not make a belief true or even worth holding.	Hopeful/Wishful Thinking The willing suspension of disbelief because of devout wishes and hopes.
Skeptical Thinking Constant critical questioning of the reliability of any knowledge we claim to possess, and requiring adequate grounds for any belief or claim to knowledge.	Authoritarian Thinking Uncritical belief is some doctrine or authority, especially without adequate grounds; unquestioning and credulous acceptance of knowledge claims made by an authority figure or institution.
Reflective Thinking Characterized by the willingness to temporarily suspend belief and reflect on the sufficiency of the belief's premises or logic and the consequences of believing or acting on those beliefs. Identifies and recognizes assumptions.	Dogmatic Thinking Characterized by the unwillingness to suspend belief and reflect on the sufficiency of the belief's premises, and ignoring the consequences of believing or acting on those beliefs. Refuses to recognize or acknowledge groundless assumptions.
Realistic Thinking Predicated on the belief that phenomena or objects of sense perception exist independently of the mind, and these provide an objective reality that can be known.	Idealistic Thinking Based on the premise that true knowledge of reality lies only in the consciousness or reason, in the sense that objective reality transcends phenomena of sense perception.
Statistical Thinking Recognition that many empirical phenomena are understood and known only in statistical terms or in a sense that deals with probabilities, not certainties.	Absolutist Thinking Belief in absolutes, and thinking characterized by holding to extreme or black and white positions that see no middle ground or gray areas.
Creative Thinking Characterized by the search for new facts and ideas which are put together in unusal and creative ways. Ability to think in new and innovative ways.	Close-minded Thinking The unwillingness to entertain new facts and ideas or use them in new and creative ways. Reliance on old or traditional ways of thinking.
Comprehensible Thinking Evidence used to reach conclusions is empirical, repeatable, testable, verifiable, analyzable, and objective.	Mystical Thinking Evidence used to reach conclusions is ephemeral, ineffable, intuitive, unverifiable, sporadic, and subjective.
Reasonable Thinking Characterized by a reliance on reason to search for and discover reliable knowledge. Emotions are not evidence, and feelings are not facts.	Emotional Thinking Characterized by a reliance on emotion and feeling to search for and discover truth or knowledge, and a pervasive distrust of reason.
Quantitative Thinking Describing nature and reality in quantitative terms.	Qualitative Thinking Describing nature and reality in often ambiguous and and imprecise qualitative terms.
Analytical Thinking Routinely comprehending the universe by a conscious and reasoned process of analysis, clarification, comparison, inference, and evaluation.	Ordinary Thinking Routinely comprehending the universe by an unexamined thought process without concern for its accuracy or completeness.

HOW DOES ONE LEARN CRITICAL THINKING? 

Critical Thinking is Scientific Thinking applied to questions and problems of everyday life by any person, including non-scientists. Scientists must think critically to practice science; there is no alternative.

Studies in which students are required to critically evaluate various forms of written material, and answer questions and reach conclusions which demonstrate analytical understanding, logical reasoning, making value judgements, etc.

Things to do: read, write, play chess, discuss current issues and controversies objectively, argue for a reason or to reach a conclusion, engage in political lobbying, question authority, attempt to change the status quo, etc.

Things to avoid: watch TV, gossip, engage in mindless disscussion, argue pointlessly, listen passively, accept the status quo, etc.

A reading by educator Dr. William T. Daly, from his essay "Developing Critical Thinking Skills:"

"The critical thinking movement in the U.S. has been bolstered and sustained by the business community's need to compete in a global economy. The general skill levels needed in the work force are going up while the skill levels of potential employees are going down. As a result, this particular educational reform movement . . . will remain crucial to the education of the work force and the economy's performance in the global arena. This economic pressure to teach critical thinking skills will fall on educational institutions because these skills, for the most part, are rarely taught or reinforced outside formal educational institutions. Unfortunately, at the moment, they are also rarely taught inside educational institutions."

The American public cannot think critically about most of the important issues that affect their lives, especially those that involve scientific or technological information. We are today in a situation of crisis proportions, with many local, national, and global problems whose understanding and solutions will require some scientific and critical thinking ability. Instead, because of their ignorance of science, many citizens fear or misunderstand science, leading to public conflicts and nonresolution of longstanding problems that could conceivably be solved or mitigated by technological solutions or acceptance of scientific necessity.

Biochemistry professor A. E. Harper says that,

"This situation arises from the lack of understanding of science and the scientific attitude. It can be remedied only through education in science, not just for those with a scientific bent but for all students and the public. It will require education that involves not just exposure to the facts and techniques of science, but education that instills a scientific attitude by teaching the process of critical evaluation of assertions and assumptions."

Humanist philospher Professor Anthony Flew has commented,

"To maintain a belief while refusing to give due weight to reasonable and relevant objections is to show that you are more concerned to maintain that belief than really to know whether it or some other is, after all, true."

Another Humanist philosopher, Dr. Paul Kurtz, makes the same point:

"It is not enough to be inwardly convinced of the truth of one's beliefs. They must...be objectively verifiable by other impartial investigators. Where we do not have sufficient evidence, we ought, if possible, to suspend judgment."

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To accept conjectures or speculations about nature that have not been adequately tested or, worse, have been shown to be false, is PSEUDOSCIENCE. (Pseudoscience is false science: ideology or doctrine that masquerades as legitimate science in an attempt to assimilate real science's prestige, truth value, and reputation for integrity and objective reasoning. Science is humanity's most successful endeavor, and pseudoscience wishes to share in that success by pretending to emulate science.)

PSEUDOSCIENCE INCLUDES ASTROLOGY, CREATIONISM, FORTUNE TELLING, FAITH HEALING, CRYSTAL HEALING, UFO-OLOGY, REINCARNATION, PSYCHIC PHENOMENA, CHANNELING, FLOOD GEOLOGY, CULT ARCHAEOLOGY, MANY NEW AGE AND FUNDAMENTALIST BELIEFS, AND MANY OTHERS, WHICH LEAD TO WIDESPREAD FRAUD, LOSS OF WEALTH AND PRODUCTIVITY, AND HUMAN SUFFERING.

To accept opinions or speculations about nature, people, societies, and nations that have not been adequately tested or, worse, have been shown to be false, is BIGOTRY. (Bigotry is "being obstinately or intolerantly devoted to one's own opinions and prejudices" and "having an irrational dislike or hatred of people who are different from you or hold beliefs that differ with yours.")

BIGOTRY INCLUDES RACISM, ETHNICISM, RELIGIOUS SECTARIANISM, PAROCHIALISM, NATIONALISM, ARCH-PATRIOTISM, JINGOISM, CHAUVINISM, PATRIARCHY, MISOGYNY, HOMOPHOBIA, AND MANY OTHERS, WHICH LEAD TO WAR, GENOCIDE, MURDER, KILLING, RAPE, SLAVERY, ROBBERY, CRIMES OF HATE, TOTALITARIANISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, HUMAN SUBJUGATION AND PERSECUTION, MAJOR LOSS OF WEALTH AND PRODUCTIVITY, AND WIDESPREAD HUMAN SUFFERING.

BIGOTRY AND PSEUDOSCIENCE ARE THE RESULT
OF NOT PRACTICING CRITICAL THINKING!

HUMANISM IS ONE OF THE FEW PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE THAT ENCOURAGES--IN FACT, DEMANDS--CRITICAL THINKING AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN THE HUMAN QUEST FOR TRUTH.

BIGOTRY AND PSEUDOSCIENCE COULD BE AVOIDED IF HUMANS WOULD LEARN AND PRACTICE CRITICAL THINKING.

THIS CAN ONLY COME ABOUT BY BETTER EDUCATION.

CRITICAL THINKING EDUCATION AND THE WIDESPREAD ADOPTION OF HUMANISM AS A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE WOULD HAVE SAVED THE WORLD OF MOST OF THE MISERY LISTED ABOVE.