Another little niggle
.....I'm thinking of creating a project that explores the use of the body in thinking...perhaps through metaphor which it has been argued by Lakoff and Johnson, always has its roots in the body.
So then, I bought a de Bono Thinking Skills book as I'm not exactly an expert on thinking skills myself...seemed logical enough...except I don't like *reading* about thinking, I want to get to *do* thinking - so a bit frustrating. And also, I wonder if rather than helping me think it just helps me understand thinking...or is that almost the same thing...anyway.......
I've also been investigating Gardner a little more and am thinking that mainly the misunderstanding and misapplication of Kinesthetic Learning does not have anything to do with him. That he has probably been very clear about how it should be practiced but the whole idea of Mulitple Intelligence has become diluted Chinese Whisper style and so I need to go back to the original text. I need to read him first hand and hear what he really said. However I have started to read some of his answers to typical criticisms..
And something he makes clear and I can see where he's coming from, is that it's impossible to develop pure and simple "thinking skills". That thinking in one discipline is quite different to thinking in another...and so thinking "critically" in one discipline is quite different to that in another...
"I doubt, however, that there is a particular species of thinking called "critical thinking." As
I've suggested with reference to memory and other putative "cross-the-board" capacities,
closer analysis calls their existence into question. Particular domains seem to entail their own
idiosyncratic forms of thinking and critique. Musicians, historians, taxonomic biologists,
choreographers, computer programmers, and literary critics all value critical thinking. But the
kind of thinking required to analyze a fugue is simply of a different order from that involved
in observing and categorizing different species, or editing a poem, or debugging a program,
or creating and revising a new dance. There is little reason to think that training of critical
thinking in one of these domains is of the same order as training of critical thinking in
another domain; nor would I expect appreciable "savings" or "transfer" when one broaches a
new domain. That is because each of these domains exhibits its own particular objects,
moves, and logic of implications".
fantastic bit of writing! I like it a lot and my instinct is to agree but it makes for a difficult journey for me!
and then you have de Bono, who from a first read seems to be suggesting you can use more general techniques to improve your thinking. And so I am constantly getting buffeted by this situated, context-specific, versus general, universal abstract dichotomy.
and how am I going to find my way through that to my practical work? do I have to choose to support critical thinking in a specific discipline?