CTA 1000
CREATIVE THINKING
by MR KUMARESWARAN.S
Understanding the
Relationship Between
Critical and Creative
Thinking
An Integrated Relationship
“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-
In Webster’s 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.”
In Webster’s New World
Dictionary, the word ‘creative’ has
three interrelated meanings:
1. Creating or able to create,
2. Having or showing imagination
or artistic or intellectual
inventiveness
3. Stimulating the imagination and
inventive powers
Criticality Assesses; Creativity Originates
• Critical and creative thought are both
achievements of thought.
• Criticality masters a process of assessing
or judging
• Creativity masters a process of
making or producing
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.
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.
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 one’s thought.
Achieving quality requires
standards of quality and
hence criticality
Achieving useful produces of one’s
thinking requires a sense of how to
make, or recast, one’s thinking at a
higher level.
To achieve any challenging
end, we must have:
• Criteria • Principles
• Gauges • Standards
• Measures • Tests
• Models
to use in judging whether we are
approaching that end.
We don’t 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.
The generative power of our
thought represents its
creativity:
• The judiciousness of our thought
represents its criticality.
• Generativists must be married to
judiciousness to achieve excellence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Questioning Mind
A Necessary Condition to
the Development of
Critical and Creative
Thinking is:
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
Dascartes’s 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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
THANK YOU
The Foundation for Critical
Thinking
www.criticalthinking.org
