Critical thinking is a type of reasonable, reflective thinking that is aimed at deciding what to believe or what to do. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false. Critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic method of Ancient Greece and in the East, to the Buddhist kalama sutta and Abhidharma. Critical thinking is an important component of most professions. It is a part of the formal education process and is increasingly significant as students progress through university to graduate education, although there is debate among educators about its precise meaning and scope..
Read more about Critical Thinking: Definitions, History and Etymology, Meaning, Skills, Procedure, Habits or Traits of Mind, Importance, Research, In Schooling
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or thinking:
“To take pride in a library kills it. Then, its motive power shifts over to the critical if admiring visitor, and apologies are necessary and acceptable and the fat is in the fire.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)