Understanding the Relationship Between Critical and Creative Thinking

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Understanding the Relationship Between Critical
and Creative Thinking

• an integrated relationship

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The critical creative functions of the mind
are so interwoven

• That neither can be separated from the other
  without an essential loss to both.
• 
  
  anonymous

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In Websters Dictionary of Synonyms

• The word critical when applied to persons who
  judge and to their judgments, not only may, but
  in very precise use does, imply an effort to see
  a thing clearly and truly so that not only the
  good in it may be distinguished from the bad and
  the perfect from the imperfect, but also that it
  as a whole may be fairly judged and valued.

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In Websters New World Dictionary, the word
creative has three interrelated meanings

• Creating or able to create,
• Having or showing imagination or artistic or
  intellectual inventiveness
• Stimulating the imagination and inventive powers

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Criticality assesses creativity originates

• Critical and creative thought are both
  achievements of thought.

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Creativity masters a process of making or
producing

• Criticality masters a process of assessing or
  judging

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Intellectual discipline and rigor are at home
with originality and productivity

• In critical thinking we assess thinking to make
  improvements.
• In creative thinking we generate thinking based
  on our sense of how to make things better.

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Thus critical thinking has a creative component
to produce a better product of thought

• And creative thinking has a critical component
  to reshape thinking in keeping with criteria of
  excellence.

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Critical thinking without a creative output is
merely negative thinking.

• Creative thinking without a critical component is
  merely novel thinking.
• It is easy to be merely negative or novel in
  ones thought.

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Achieving quality requires standards of
quality---and hence criticality

• Achieving useful produces of ones thinking
  requires a sense of how to make, or recast, ones
  thinking at a higher level.

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To achieve any challenging end, we must have

• criteria, gauges, measures, models, principles,
  standards, or tests to use in judging whether we
  are approaching that end.

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We dont achieve excellence in thinking with no
end in view. We design for a reason

• With standards that enable us to generate a
  product that meets crucial criteria. Our
  creative thinking must be tested against critical
  standards.

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The generative power of our thought represents
its creativity

• The judiciousness of our thought represents its
  criticality.
• Generativeness must be married to judiciousness
  to achieve excellence.

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Every genuine act of figuring out anything is a
new making, a new series of creative acts,
however mundane.

• To come to understand anything requires that the
  mind construct new connections in the mind.

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No one can be given knowledge or understanding
they must all create or construct it for
themselves.

• Didactic teaching does not work because it
  violates the essential conditions under which the
  mind learns---by acts of construction in the
  mind.

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At even the most fundamental level of learning,
at the earliest age of learning, the learner must
actively construct (create) to learn.

• We must abandon the notion that knowledge can be
  transmitted without active creative
  construction on the part of the learner.

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At even the most fundamental level of learning,
at the earliest age of learning, the learner must
actively assess its construction to take genuine
ownership.

• Am I being clear?
• Am I being accurate?
• These are minimal criteria for the construction
  of knowledge.

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The essential need for criticality and creativity
applies to the work of the most humble student as
well as that of the greatest genius

• If we study the development of the greatest
  minds---Aristotle, Beethoven, Curie, Da Vinci,
  Galileo, Michelangelo, Newton, Darwin,
  Einstein---we will discover that each went
  through a period of growth in which they
  internalized high standards of criticality that
  played a significant role in the manner in which
  they went about their later creative production.

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A Necessary Condition to the Development of
Critical and Creative Thinking is

• A Questioning Mind

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Understanding the Mind of Isaac Newton

• At the age of 19 Newton drew up a list of
  questions under 45 headings. His title,
  Quaestiones, signaled his goal to constantly
  question the nature of matter, place, time, and
  motion. He worked hard to understand the thinking
  of others working on his list of problems. For
  example, he bought Dascartess Geometry and read
  it by himself. After two or three pages, when he
  could understand no further, he began again and
  advanced farther and continued doing so till he
  made himself master of the whole.

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Understanding the Mind of Charles Darwin

• Like Newton (and Einstein) Darwin had a careful
  mind rather than a quick one I have as much
  difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly
  and concisely and this difficulty has caused me
  a very great loss of time, but it had had the
  compensating advantage of forcing me to think
  long and intently about every sentence, and thus
  I have been lead to see errors in reasoning and
  in my own observations or those of others.

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Understanding the Mind of Albert Einstein

• Einstein failed his entrance exam to Zurich
  Polytechnic. When he finally passed (by
  attending a cram school) he did not want to think
  about scientific problems for a year. His final
  exam was so non-distinguished that afterward he
  was refused a post as an assistant.

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Understanding the Mundane Nature of Critical and
Creative Thinking Creativity should not be
mystified.

• Much of what appears to be inexplicable can be
  explained by mundane accounts. The great
  creative thinkers were great critical thinkers,
  and vice versa. The interrelation and
  interdependence holds for all learners and
  thinkers at all levels.

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• Stimulating intellectual work develops the
  intellect as both creator and evaluator as a
  creator that evaluates and as an evaluator that
  creates. The result is fitness of mind,
  comprehensive intellectual excellence.

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• The Foundation for Critical Thinking
• www.criticalthinking.org

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