Critical Thinking (UOP Custom) | Date: 11 April 2011, 20:35
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Preface
This is a book about our thinking. If we begin to think more actively, some
stunning changes are possible: we can know ourselves better, we can have more options in life, we can distinguish fact from fiction and hype from hope, we can begin to think more decisively as we choose liferoads to walk down, and we can become more persuasive as we listen and talk to our fellow thinkers.
We often define ourselves by our actions. In a way, we are what we do, but perhaps more than we realize, we are what we think. For instance, if people pretend to like someone whom they hate, is it their hateful thinking or their false acting (or both) that really represents what they are? “Whether a thought is spoken or not, it is the real thing and has power” (Herbert, 1987, p. 257).
We want you, the reader, to use this book, to challenge your mind, to strengthen your thinking ability. Says Dr. Arnold Scheible, director of the
Brain Research Institute at UCLA, “If you decrease input you decrease structure.
The brain is just like a muscle—use it or lose it.”
We have used our brain to explore the universe, and the sciences of physics and astronomy are now firmly established. But exploring our brain will be
more difficult. The neurosciences are still at an early stage, even though knowledge of the brain has leapt exponentially. We have already identified many of the neurotransmitters that control neural activity, and our ability to look inside the brain has progressed from anatomy to EEG to CAT to MRI to PET.
Still, unlike the DNA code in genetics, the brain code has not been deciphered. If we use physics as a measure, brain research is still at the pre-Newtonian stage of knowledge.
Complicating this puzzle is our brain’s enormous intricacy: Over a trillion cells compose it; 100 billion of them are neurons devoted to our thinking
process. Each of these, on the average, reaches out to make thousands and thousands of other contacts. If we could walk along this marvelous
labyrinth, the number of different journeys we could take may exceed the number of atoms in the universe! The neurons cannot communicate to quite
that extent, but the number of real, potential pathways in the brain is still absolutely unimaginable! With such tremendous complexity, can our thinking
brain even begin to comprehend itself?
And that, perhaps, is the greatest obstacle of all: we are attempting to know our mind with our mind. That is like a pair of pliers trying to grasp
itself. How can the instrument of thinking grasp itself? While this obstacle may seem theoretically insurmountable, practically we do experience the ability to reflect on our thought; and in an attempt to escape from this cyclic conundrum, we will frequently stress communicating our thinking in writing
and in dialogue so that we can objectively analyze the results of our thinking...
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