History of Critical Thinking

Thinking is an internal and mental process to operate information. Thinking is the complex process of ideas in the human mind. According to Dewey, thinking is as the stream of consciousness which cannot control. With educational context, Dewey present the development reflective thought is most important goal in learning and it is teacher who develop the sense of thinking by engaging them in to the various task of thinking. There are some perspectives for the thinking in the educational context. Bloom presented the psychological view of thinking and according to the psychological perspective the thinking is cognitive process. Research proves that the teaching thinking as the valuable means raise the educational level. To understand this complex matter one scholar named Thagard present the analogy of the computer and human mind. According to him as software is work as mind and the mental representation are like the store data in the computer. The other perspective is related to the sociological view the thinking affect by different social context. According to Philosophical perspectives, thinking is useful to know the development knowledge in educational process.

 All perspectives have different views of thinking but there is same view of the importance of it in the educational purpose. The main point is that the critical thinking is help lot to fulfill the goal. The history of critical thinking is very ancient and seen the various aspect of critical thinking in every stage is modified with need of the learning. Socrates set the root of tradition of critical thinking and it is known as “Socratic Question” and it is prove to best critical thinking teaching strategy. It reflects the difference between what is reasonable and what logical belief is. This followed by many scholars and in middle ages the systematic critical thinking in teaching tested and examine the logical and reasonable beliefs. In 15 and 16 century the eco of the all scholars was turn to analysis and criticism. Francis Bacon, in England put the ground of modern science with the thinking process in his book ‘The Advancement of Learning’. So the critical thinking begun with think about art, politics, society, human nature etc. further the intellectual critical thinking emphasized by Boyle and Newton but they were not in fever of traditional perspective. There was the great contribution of French scholars in 17 century and they emphasized more on the reason and critical questioning for the sound thinking. Critical thinking is further extended and applied in politics by Karl Marx, in the biological life by Darwin, to understand the human mind by Freud. In field of linguistic, it used for function of the symbols and language in human use. In 20 century, there is the emergency of formulation to understand the critical thinking and one of this is the sociocentrical tendencies of human mind to think. In modern time the baseline are these fundamental thoughts and reasoning.

 As critical thinking is most important in the learning process, it should start from very early stage of the learning. For the practice intellectual language, learners need the minimal critical thinking of every possible subject. Critical thinking is not only to memories information and examine but it is the process to cultivate the reasoning and critically proves facts.

This is the brief information about the history of critical thinking. The link given below will help for the detail history of critical thinking. 

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/a-brief-history-of-the-idea-of-critical-thinking/408