Unit2criticalthinking

Unit 2 Critical Thinking
批判性思维
思辨
Keynote Address—July 23, 2007
By Richard Paul, Director of Research and Professional Development at the Center for Critical Thinking,
Chair of the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking
The 27th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking — July 23— 26, 2007 Berkeley, CA
In college education and in daily life, critical thinking is of vital importance. Richard Paul, in the following section, gives an enlightening discussion of the issue.
What is critical thinking? There are many ways to define it. It is a system for opening every existing system. It opens up
business, chemistry, and sports like tennis and basketball. It opens up professional practice. It opens up ethnics and enables us to see through ideology. It enables us to put things into intellectual perspective它让我们以知识的眼光看待事物. A system that opens up systems is one way to think of critical thinking.开发各种系统的系统，这是看待批判性思维的一种方式。

Here is the first definition of critical thinking.
Or, critical thinking is thinking that analyzes thought分析思想, that assesses thought评估思想, and that transforms thought for the better升华思想的思维.
Here is the second definition of critical thinking.
There’s a third way to talk about critical thinking overlapping and related to the other two. It’s thinking about thinking while thinking in order to think better.
Here is the third definition of critical thinking.
Everyone thinks. We have no choice about that. But, not everybody thinks about their thinking. And not everyone
thinks about it well. You can worry about your thinking. You can think badly of your thinking. You can be embarrassed by your thinking. You can focus on it in a
dysfunctional way你可以以功能失调的方式关注你的思维—that is not critical thinking.
This morning, let’s think about it as a way of thinking that enables a thinker to think regularly at a higher level than most people are capable of thinking. In other words, critical thinking, as I am conceiving it, transforms thinking in two directions把思维导致两个方向. You think more systematically as a result. And you think more comprehensively as a result. And in thinking more comprehensively, you think at a higher level. Not because you are at a higher level as a person, but because you are able to put thinking into the background and see it = thinking in a larger, more comprehensive framework.
For example, we need to discover the extent to which our thinking is bound by a culture受文化的约束. Cultures are good
in many ways. But, to the extent that they lock us in to one way使我们局限于某一视角of looking at the world, we need to transcend them我们需要超越文化. We need to think beyond them. Why is this important? It’s important because we, as creatures, are deeply determined深深地受到（我们思维方式）的左右— in our life, and in our behavior, and in our character, and in other ways – are determined by our thinking. We have no choice but to be governed by thought. The question is, do we govern the thought that governs us我们控制了那些控制我们的思想了吗? Ideas control us.观念控制着我们Do we control them?
Ideas control our thinking. So in order to think critically, we need to get rid of ideas.
Reversing the process so that we’re in the driver’s seat 将这个过程倒过来，这样我们就坐在驾驶座上—so that we’re
doing the thinking we need to do as well as we can – is what critical thinking is about. Our future as a species is dependent on whether we can develop the wherewithal 方法to raise our collective thinking激发我们的集体思维so as to produce positive changes in societies across the world.
The task before us collectively is a Herculean[ˌhɜːkjuˈliːən]大力神的，力大无比的，费力的one. The task of developing critical societies. The idea of a critical society dates back many hundred years, but it was very pointedly called for明确提出in 1906, by William Graham Sumner, the great anthropologist, who emphasized in his seminal开创性的，种子的book, "Folkways,"《民俗论》that if a critical society existed – that is, a society in which critical thinking was a major social value –if such a society were to emerge, it would
transform every dimension of life and practice. We are far from such a society, but we need to think about it. It needs to be part of our vision. The structure of this conference suggests some of the most important dimensions of this vision.
If you think about the task of developing critical thinking, do not think that task is going to be accomplished easily without facing barriers to critical thought, amongst which are the following. Human egocentricity, our tendency to
think with ourselves at the center of the world. Sociocentricity, our tendency to think within the confines of our social groups. Self-delusion, our tendency to create pictures of the world that deceive us and others. Narrow-mindedness, wherein we think of ourselves as broad, deep, and in touch with reality when, if only we understood, we would see ourselves as narrow and limited.
Or, think of the barrier of fear. Fear undermines thinking, fear drives us to the lowest levels of thought, fear makes us defensive. It makes us little and petty. And then there is human insecurity. And, then human habits, our tendencies to go through the same old patterns of thought and behavior and be dominated by them; our inability to target our negative habits and replace them with positive habits. Then there is routine: Ordinary routine. When you go back to your home
environment, ordinary routine will click in and many of you will find that the things you intended to do, the changes you intended to make, somehow are swallowed up in the ordinary routine of things. And connected to routine there is a huge obstacle: bureaucracy. We have created all kinds of levels of monitoring and testing and controlling and limiting and sanctioning, ordering, defining our behavior and our thoughts. And, very often the bureaucrat forgets the purpose for which the institution exists.
Then for us who are teaching, student resistance to critical thinking is an obstacle, because critical thinking asks those students to learn in a new way. And it is a way that is not comfortable to most of them. Our thinking is limited by mistaken notions, by ignorance, by our limited knowledge, and by stubbornness, our activated ignorance. And finally, our
resistance to doing the intellectual work necessary to critical thinking.
We need hundreds of millions of people around the world who have learned to take and internalize the foundations of critical thought. This can be done only person-by-person through a process, which we call intellectual work. Think of the "Elements of Thought:" Each element plays a crucial role in thought. What is our purpose? What questions are we raising? What information are we using? What assumptions are we making? What data are we gathering? What data do we not have? Given the data that we have, what is it telling us? And, when we come to conclusions about the data, what do those conclusions imply? Within what point of view are we thinking? Do we need to consider another point of view? Where can we get access to such points of view? Questions like this are questions that
embody the elements in very important ways. They are crucial questions. But, are we in the habit of asking them?
There's a wonderful book on historical thinking by Carr. The title of the book is "What is History?" This book was written I think in the later '30s, or possibly '40s, of the last century and, in it, Carr argues that there is no longer such a thing as "our history." There are only "histories." To construct a history is to tell a story about the past, but, as Carr reminds us, there are infinite numbers of stories that could be told. Which story is important? The construction of history requires value judgments. It requires that we consider whose story needs to be told. And, when that story is told we need to critically consider what it is telling us; what is it teaching us. In which case, then, if we understood Carr, we would realize that we are all historical thinkers. We're
not all historians, but we all have a history. And the history can dominate us, or we can use it to our advantage. Our thinking produces it.
Then what standards do you use to assess your thinking and the thinking of others? Now Most will say, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean standards of assessment in thinking? Not many people respond with an answer like: “I use the standards of clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic and fairness.”
Critical thinking is not one isolated skill. It is not even a random list of skills. It's an orchestrated way of thinking that enables you to decompose your thinking at any moment. It encompasses basic structures integrated together into a whole. It assess thinking for its quality, for its clarity, for its accuracy, for its precision, for its relevance. It raises
thinking thereby to a higher quality. It makes it better. Critical thinking is a way of teaching, a way of learning, a way of being in the world in which the thinker self-monitors and self-assesses.
The American Medical Association did a large study that was published four years ago on unnecessary deaths due to the failure of medical practitioners to do what is called for in standard practice. How many Americans died unnecessarily because their medical practitioners — their doctors and nurses — did the wrong thing and people died as a result? According to the American Medical Association, somewhere around 50,000 every year. Why are so many people dying through malpractice? They're dying because of the way we have educated medical practitioners. They are not learning to think critically about what they're doing. They are not learning to monitor
their behavior accordingly. They are failing to follow basic good practice. They are oversimplifying, jumping to conclusions, making faulty inferences, misconceptualizing, etc.... Some diagnosis is put into the record and then a patient is trapped by anyone who subsequently examines them because "They have a diagnosis!" But, doctors are just one; the medical field is just one area. I mean my remarks to apply to every single area. Let's take one further example.
We live increasingly in a world of accelerated change. Things are not only changing, they're changing faster and faster and faster. And not only is the world a world of accelerated change, it's a world of intensifying complexity, and of increasing danger. If our students are not learning to think critically, how are they going to know how to change their thinking in keeping with the changes of the
world?
Thus, critical thinking requires you to
work on your thinking continually, to
make your thinking the object of thought;
to make your behavior the object of your
thinking; to make your beliefs the object of
your thinking.
Keys
A.d
B.1~5 b d d b d
6~10 d b d a d
C.1~5 a b a d d
6~10 c a a c c
Reading Skills
Deciding with Synonyms and Abtonyms Practice
1. Finding synonyms and antonyms. Check your dictionary. Find at least two synonyms and two antonyms for each word.
Word Synonyms Antonyms
Fast Reading
Passage One
No one thought of anything even a little bit like the zipper until Whitecomb L. Judson came along. There were buttons and button-holes, hooks and eyes, laces and buckles. They all took an irritatingly long time to do up, especially when men wore high-laced boots and fashionable ladies squeezed themselves into long corsets.
Whitecomb L. Judson's slide-fastener was an out-of-the-blue invention, and no one knows what gave him the idea. No one even knows much about him, except that
he was a mechanical engineer living in Chicago and that he patented other inventions, to do with a street railway system and motor-cars.
Judson invented the first zipper (called, at the time, a Clasp Locker or Unlocker) in 1891. This ingenious little device looks so simple, and the principle behind it is simple: one row of hooks and eyes slotting neatly into another row by means of a tab. Yet it took twenty-two years, many improvements and another inventor to make the zipper really practical.
(164 words) 1. Before Judson invented the zipper, people found buttoning clothes to be ________.( B )
(a) interesting
(b) burdensome
(c) easy
(d) comfortable
2. When Judson's invention first appeared, people ________.( B )
(a) had expected it for a long time
(b) were very much surprised
(c) didn't understand it
(d) were indifferent to it
3. The first zipper was invented in ________.( C )
(a) the end of the 18th century
(b) the beginning of the 19th century
(c) the end of the 19th century
(d) the beginning of the 20th century
4.The word "ingenious" means ________.( A )
(a) clever
(b) admirable
(c) important
(d) useful
5. A good title for the above passage is ________. ( D )
(a) Judson the Inventor
(b) How the Zipper Works
(c) The Principle of the Zipper
(d) The Invention of the Zipper
Passage Two
The inventor of spectacles probably lived in the town of Pisa, Italy, around 1286, and was almost certainly a craftsman working in glass. But nobody knows his name. We only know this much about him because Friar Giordane preached a sermon one Wednesday morning in February 1306 at a church in Florence. "It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eye-glasses which make for good vision," said the Friar. "One of the best arts and most necessary that the world has. So short a time is it since there was invented a new art that never existed. I have seen the man who first invented and created it, and I have talked to him." We know what Friar Giordane said because admirers copied his sermons down as he gave them.
The inventor of spectacles apparently kept the method of making them to himself. Perhaps he thought this was the best way of getting money from his invention. But the idea soon got around. As early as 1300, craftsmen in Venice, the center of Europe’s glass industry, were making the new "disks for the eyes". Spectacles at first were only shaped for far-sighted people. Concave lenses, for short-sighted people, were not developed until the late fifteenth century.
Spectacles allowed people to go on reading and studying long after bad eyesight would normally have forced them to give up. They were like a new pair of eyes. The inventor of such a valuable thing should be honored, everyone thought. But for centuries no one had any idea who the inventor really was. So all kinds of candidates were put forward: Dutch, English, German, Italians from rival cities.
A fake memorial was erected last century
in a church in Florence to honor a man as the true inventor of spectacles －but he never even existed!
(308 words) 6. The invention of spectacles appeared in the ________ century in Europe. ( B )
(a) 12th
(b) 13th
(c) 14th
(d) 15th
7. The first record of the spectacles is to be found in ________. ( B )
(a) newspapers
(b) church sermons
(c) trade reports
(d) praises of Jordan
8. The first spectacles were made for ________. ( B )
(a) any one who had an eye trouble
(b) the far-sighted
(c) the short-sighted
(d) both the far-sighted and the
short-sighted
9. Which of the following is true? ( D )
(a) The inventor made known his
method of making spectacles.
(b) Florence was the center of Europe’s glass industry in the 14th century.
(c) In the 14th century short-sighted
people could read books with the help of spectacles.
(d) Early craftsmen used lenses for
far-sighted people.
10. The final paragraph discusses ________. ( D )
(a) the function of spectacles
(b) the fake memorial
(c) the invention of spectacles
(d) the identity of the inventor
Passage Three
Europeans have been using the wheelbarrow for about eight hundred years.
But the Chinese invented it at least ten centuries before that. Ancient Chinese gave the wheelbarrow nice names －Wooden Ox and Gliding Horse. "In the time taken by a man (with a similar burden) to go six feet, the Wooden Ox could get twenty feet," wrote an admiring historian in AD 430. "It could carry the food supply (of one man) for a whole year, and yet after twenty miles the porter would not feel tired."
A famous general called Chuke Liang developed wheelbarrows two hundred years before this historian was writing, to help carry supplies for his army. But, very recently, pictures have been discovered on ancient tombs, and bricks, of even earlier wheelbarrows. So perhaps they were invented in the first century AD.
No one knows how people in Europe found out about the wheelbarrow －or, for that matter, about many other Chinese
inventions. Perhaps the idea came overland across the steppes, with nomadic (游牧的) tribes. Or perhaps traders using the famous silk-route to the great city of Constantinople, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, talked about things seen in far-off China. Probably someone who heard the talk worked out his own version, because the wheelbarrow used in Europe is a different design from the Chinese. It has the wheel out in front, so that the load is supported both by the wheel and the man pushing it. The wheelbarrow in China has the wheel in the middle, right under the load, and the pusher only has to steer and balance it. At all events, some time in the twelfth or thirteenth century, workmen building the great castles and cathedrals of Europe had, to their great relief, a new simple device to help them. One man with a wheelbarrow could carry the same load as two men and much more easily and
quickly. The wheel took the place of a man.
(330 words)
11. The Chinese began to use the wheelbarrow at least ________.( C )
(a) eight centuries ago
(b) ten centuries ago
(c) eighteen centuries ago
(d) two centuries earlier than the
Europeans
12. The historian admired the wheelbarrow because it could move faster and ________.( D )
(a) carry the food supply of one man
(b) carry the food supply for a whole year
(c) carry a heavy load for twenty miles
(d) carry a much heavier load and save energy
13. The Chinese invention of the wheelbarrow might have reached Europe
with the help of any of the following except ________.( D )
(a) nomadic tribes
(b) traders using the silk-route
(c) Mediterranean
(d) ancient Greeks
14. The European design of the wheelbarrow ________.( D )
(a) has the wheel in the middle under the load
(b) is similar to that of the Chinese
(c) needs less pushing force
(d) is less scientific than the Chinese one
15. The final paragraph discusses ________. ( A )
(a) the European wheelbarrow
(b) the difference between the European wheelbarrow and the Chinese wheelbarrow
(c) how the idea of the wheelbarrow
came to Europe
(d) the invention of the wheelbarrow
Happy Accidents
Leo Baekeland increased the amounts of formaldehyde and carbolic acid in the beaker and turned the flame higher than usual.
During the months of experimentation he had noted that by varying the quantity of each chemical, by changing the intensity of the heat, and by stirring or not stirring, he could obtain mixtures with different properties. Although he could not determine beforehand what kind of mixture he would get, one thing was certain: he was on the right track. Eventually this process would result in a better varnish.
Suddenly the mixture began boiling violently, and hot particles were spewed all over the room. Baekeland and his assistant dived for cover.As they peered from their shelter, the mixture began to overflow the beaker, gradually stopped boiling, and started to harden.
Cautiously Baekeland approached the beaker and turned off the gas. Then he examined the hard mass that had formed on its sides. Whatever this mysterious substance was, it was not varnish!
It was a stubborn gray mass. Its very stubbornness, Baekeland realized, was what would make it valuable. Now a way to shape it had to be found.
Day after day Baekeland and his assistant tried to soften the irregular gray mass. But regardless of what the used, nothing had any effect on it－neither chemicals, intense heat, pressure, nor electrical current.
Months of unsuccessful experiments followed. Finally a method of molding the substance was discovered in 1909. The name given this new discovery was "Bakelite," and with it began what is one of today's biggest industries: plastics.
Leo Baekeland is only one of countless scientists who have set out in search of one thing and through an accident or unforeseen event have discovered something else - often more valuable than what they were seeking.
In 1754 an English writer by the name of Horace Walpole, coined a word for such "happy accidents":
serendipity.It means "the ability to find unexpected things that are often more valuable or agreeable than the things sought after." The word comes from Serendip, the name of a country in the fifth-century fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip." In this tale, the three princes were always discovering by chance things they were not seeking.
The history of scientific inquiry is filled with examples of serendipity and the frontiers of science have been advanced greatly because of it.
Charles Goodyear had spent years trying to find a means of processing rubber so that it would not turn into goo in the summer heat or become stiff and brittle in the winter cold. By 1839 he knew he was closer to solving the problem than he had ever been. He was getting fairly good results by adding sulphur to melted crude rubber. But something was still missing.
Then one evening when Charles was showing a bit of rubber to a friend, he accidentally dropped it onto a hot stove. Disgustedly, Charles dipped a second spoonful of rubber from the kettle. Then he scraped the "ruined" bit of rubber from the stove with an iron poker.
Suddenly Charles began to dance around the room like a man gone crazy. He dashed out of the house and thrust the piece of rubber into a snowbank to test it.
At last he had found the answer! This rubber, mixed with sulphur and then exposed to intense heat, was flexible in cold yet firm in heat.
The accidental dropping of that bit of rubber led to the development of the process －vulcanization of rubber －which makes thousands of useful rubber products possible.
One day in the year 1895 an absent-minded professor, Wilhelm von Roentgen, was working in a laboratory in Germany. When he left the lab, he forgot to disconnect the electric current to the vacuum tube he had been using in his study of cathode rays.
The professor, whose hobby was photography, had also left an unexposed photographic plate under a stack of books on a table in the same room. Later he used the plate to take a picture of some scenery. When he developed the picture, he was puzzled by a shadow that appeared right in the middle of it. The shadow had the distinct shape of a key.
But how did it get in the middle of the picture? The professor traced his steps back to the laboratory where he had kept the plate. Oh yes, it had been underneath that stack of books.
He studied the outline of the key. It was shaped exactly like his office key which he had misplaced again. Now, where was it this time? Oh, yes. He had used it as a bookmark.
The professor picked up a book from the table and shook it. Out dropped the office key.
Then he remembered that the plate had been in the room when the cathode ray tube had been accidentally left burning.
So, through a series of seemingly unrelated accidents -- and thanks to a very absent-minded professor -- medical science obtained one of its most useful tools: X-ray.
In the late 1800's a husband-and-wife team of researchers, Marie and Pierre Curie, made scientific history with the discovery of radium. This discovery changed many theories about the atom and the composition of matter. This alone would have been
enough to impress the scientific world and to make the names of the Curies immortal. Even so, the Curies were not satisfied. True, they had made a great discovery. But they realized that there was much more to be learned about this mysterious substance.
One day a friend and fellow scientist came into the Curies’ laboratory and showed Pierre a burn on his abdomen. Radium, he told Pierre, had caused it. About a week before, he had put a piece of radium in his coat pocket and had forgotten about it for several hours. The burn had appeared a few days later, and although it looked as though it should be painful, it did not hurt at all.
Why did radium burn the skin? What would happen to skin which had been burned? Question piled upon question and the Curies had to find the answers. They started further research which led to the discovery that radium, which could painlessly burn human flesh, could be used in treating diseases of the skin and body tissue, especially cancer.
Not only is the history of scientific inquiry filled with stories of such "happy accidents" as these, so is the history of the world.
Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth and discovered Florida.
Columbus set out in search of a new route to the Indies and discovered North America.
Even your own life is filled with examples of serendipity. A trip to the beach －a pleasant thing in itself －could become even more pleasant if while there you met the person who would eventually become your best friend.
Serendipity: that Walpole coined a word with such an interesting history is in itself a very "happy accident."
(1 167 words) Follow-up Exercises
A. Comprehending the text.
Choose the best answer.
1. Which of the following statements is true? ( A )
(a) Baekeland accidentally found the method of making plastic.
(b) Baekeland discovered how to produce varnish by accident.
(c) Baekeland developed a way to produce better varnish.
(d) Varnish was not in use until Baekeland discovered how to make plastic.
2. After his initial discovery, Baekeland ______. ( B )
(a) continued to improve varnish
(b) did many experiments that were aimed at finding a method to shape plastic
(c) did a series of successful experiments and soon worked out a method of molding plastic
(d) did many experiments, the results of which indicated that plastic could never be softened
3. Charles Goodyear tried to find the kind of rubber that ________.( A )
(a) can be bent easily in cold but remains firm when heated
(b) turns sticky in heat but stiff in cold
(c) does not break easily
(d) can be easily bent into different shapes
4. Vulcanization of rubber was developed as a result of ________.( D )
(a) Charles Goodyear's theory of rubber processing
(b) Charles Goodyear's careful study of the properties of rubber behavior
(c) years of repeated experiments
(d) Charles Goodyear's accidentally dropping some rubber onto a hot stove
5. Which of the following statements is not true about what happened in Professor Roentgen's laboratory? ( C )
(a) The professor forgot to unplug the apparatus connected to his vacuum tube.
(b) The shadow in the middle of the photographic plate had the shape of the professor's office key.
(c) The professor used a vacuum tube to develop his photographs.
(d) The professor had put his office key between the pages of a book.
6. The discovery of X-ray was largely due to ________.( A )
(a) Professor Roentgen's absent-mindedness
(b) Professor Roentgen's serious research in this field
(c) Professor Roentgen's devotion to medical science
(d) Professor Roentgen's achievements in the study of cathode rays
7. Why didn't the friend come to see Pierre about the burn on his abdomen immediately after he had put a piece of radium in his coast pocket? ( D )
(a) Because he thought he could find the cause of the burn without asking Pierre.
(b) Because he forgot that he had put a piece of radium in his pocket.
(c) Because although there was a burn on his abdomen, it didn't hurt.。