Critical Thinking

I took the bus home today.  It was nearly full, and as I sat reading a Steven King novel, I couldn't help but overhear a conversation taking place just behind me.

The discussion was about the most broad of philosophies.  It reminded me of the old British TV series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the new re-make has better special effects, but excludes some of the best parts of the story), where the "ultimate question" is posed as: "What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?"  Of course, the famous reply (after thousands of years thinking) was 42.  Yes, the bus conversation was very much like that.

"Have you seen that movie What the Bleep?"

"No, what's it about?"

"It's about physics and how everything is connected and how anything is possible.  It just depends on what you believe."

"I read about quantum physics and how all the possibilities happen at the same time."

"Yeah, you just have to decide to do something, and it's possible."

The conversation drifted from eastern philosophies to Jewish history to and back to physics, never seeming to build to anything.  It occurred to me that many people make these intellectual journeys, reading books and assimilating philosophies, but they only seem to make sense to the person taking the journey.  Either that or they don't understand what they are learning.

It then occurred to me how much more productive the conversation would be with a little critical thinking.  In fact, all three of these strangers may get a lot more out of their journeys with it.  Critical thinking, or more specifically, objective processing of new information, is a topic not touched in school.  You're parents don't teach you how to think.  You just think.  You take for granted the information you get as a child, accepting every bed time fairy tale and each distant relative's war story as fact. 

Should this be encouraged? Here's my opinion: no.  Critical thinking includes certain measures to ensure the validity of new information before it's accepted. For example, if you read that physics is about how "things are all connected", you have to ask a series of questions about the assertion: what is the source? What is the context for the statement? How can it be corroborated? 

The pinnacle of critical thinking is the Scientific Method itself.  To be a true theory in science, the scientist must go through a series of steps:

1. Observe: Using one or more of your senses, gather some data. This is the easy part.
2. Experiment: Perform a test that ensures what you are observing is in fact what you think it is.
3. Hypothesis: Based on experiments, form a guess about why what you are observing is happening.
4. Test & Corroborate: Perform more experiments based on your hypothesis to test it's integrity.  Have others do the same. Over time, if not proven wrong, the hypothesis becomes a theory. 
   NOTE: Theories are never considered 100 percent true, only true to the extent that they have been not proven false. (the Theory of Gravity has been tested in many ways over decades, it's pretty close to 100%.  String Theory has not been tested a great deal, it's maybe at 50%.)

But this takes time.  Sure, critical thinking is hard because you have to actually work at it.  Rather than take whatever you read and like to be true, you have to determine source authority, internal consistency, and most important: repeatability.  If you read three books on a topic by respected authors who could be considered experts in the field, and find they generally agree, then you can start accepting new information.

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." - Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951)

But alas, stories are so much more interesting.  How pointless would it be to point out that quantum mechanics is a theory-based science that studies sub-atomic particles with great numerical prowess. The idea that we are all connected is a narrative with little correlation to physics. 

It's sad that these authors capitalize on our lazy minds to spew philosophical jargon under the guise of science.  It leave people with the mistaken impression that they have scientific knowledge, and more importantly, it dilutes and perverts what science really is: the study of the world around us.

A scientist who talks philosophy is not speaking as an expert.