Yes, academics do set assignments so that they can check students have understood the material presented in the unit, that they have done the readings asked of them, attended lectures and labs and synthesised this information into some form of considered and well thought out approach called: knowledge. And in reading assignments this is what academics are looking for, a considered and well thought out approach.

Unfortunately,  thinking cannot be done in half bites, in late nights and in high stress conditions. Thinking is an activity that takes time. A period of time that may stretch beyond the due date of an assignment, that may stretch beyond the end of the semester and that may stretch on into the rest of your life. So, whilst you finish off the essay or report that is due next week, remember you may be thinking about those ideas that are currently forming and coalescing in your mind, for the rest of your life. So make them good ones!

Slow down, build up those brain “muscles” bit by bit, and don’t worry if you feel confused! That is all part of the training program of being in first year at university.

Oh, we are all so busy! Busy students, busy lecturers, busy people rushing about from one activity to the next, finding a lecture , buying books, on the computer watch us all go, as we run, run, run! It is certainly a valid observation that to juggle study, paid employment and family and friends takes a great deal of time management. But only when we slow down occasionally can we have the space and place, to think! One way to do this is to make a little room inside our brains and spend a short time each day throwing out old thoughts and making room for new ones!

I have read, somewhere, (alas I cannot recall the reference to back up my claim) that it takes approximately three weeks to develop a habitual way of acting. The first three weeks we have to consciously work on remembering to do something ( clean our teeth, get up early) then after that it becomes an easy habit that we do effortlessly. One way to develop the habit of thinking is plan to have ten minutes in your day sitting quietly by yourself and sorting through your thoughts. As they hop into your brain have a look at them and decide if it is an old worn out boring thought you have seen many times and is ready to be thrown in the discard pile or is it a new and interesting thought worth pursuing and exploring. You don’t have to do the exploring right away just start classifying your thoughts, as a start to developing the habit of thinking.

If you spent 40 hours a week for 3 years going to the gym, swimming laps, playing tennis or some other sport you would expect your body shape, your muscle tone and your level of fitness to completely different to what it was when you started. University is gym for the brain!

photo credit: Kitty ♥
So next time you sit down to read something that you might think is a boring dry academic text remember: do your warm up exercise first, stretch those muscles before you get into lifting any heavy weights, don’t over do it and work the brain for 15 minutes then take a short 5 minute break and come back to the text, drink lots of water to hydrate all those synapses and expect to have a few aches and pains after a good workout.

photo credit: Smabs Sputzer

Thinking hurts when you start and that is a sign you are developing and improving your ability to lift the heavy weights of great texts and ideas with your mind!

By exemplar Kuhn is calling attention to that way that repeating actions and thoughts (such as learning how to set up and do standard scientific experiments) molds the way that we perceive reality. We are building a structure within our brain that focuses our perception and cognition in certain ways and leaves out other ways of seeing and thinking. Each time that I repeat an action or a behavior I am growing more connections in my brain and reinforcing that way of thinking. Some wonderful examples of this have been given by Prof Susan Greenfield (Brain of the Future) . She also spoke of this in her address at the Sir Walter Murdoch lecture (September 2008)

The question arises of: how do I step outside of the paradigm that has been created by all the exemplars in my life when I want to think critically and creatively? How do I see afresh and new? How do I create new thoughts? This is both more difficult and more easy that you may imagine, since I would suggest to you that 98% of your thoughts each day are the same. They may be rephrased in slightly different ways but if you pay attention you may be shocked by how little newness arises in daily thinking. Then talk to a small ‘pre-school’ child and notice how much newness arises in their thinking each day! ‘Why is the sky blue?’, ‘Why is the grass green?’ , they ask and so forth. We know the answers to these questions as adults but we tend to not use that same childlike attitude of wonder towards the world, which would assist us to ask: ‘why does this product come with all this packaging?’ ‘Is it necessary?’ ‘What would happen if we, as a country, refused to allow in any products from overseas that had unnecessary and waste producing packaging?’ Why should household consumers be responsible for the waste generated by manufactures through over packaging of products? Suddenly the paradigm of solid waste management looks different when we ask these simple questions of taken for granted roles and responsibilities.

So, critical thinking is also creative and playful thinking;

photo credit: robertrice

it is the possibility of imagining the impossible which allows us to grow new ways of seeing, in our brains.

Why?

The main reason why is because human beings don’t know very much about the matter and structure of the universe, and we would like to find out more.
There is no specific outcome for this scientific experiment in terms of making money or products , rather it is for the pursuit of knowledge. No doubt there will be spin-offs that will lead to improvements in technology that may filter down to impact on the lives of some people ( after all this is how the internet developed) but that is not the major motivation for doing this sort of scientific research.

How many times whilst studying for your degree do you wonder:
why am I reading this text?
why do I have to find out about this theory?
Why do I have to critically analyse this concept in a 2000 word essay?
how will this help me in my future career?

When such questions arise perhaps you might consider the perspective of the scientists involved in the LHC, and remember that none of us knows what we will find when we wonder, explore, imagine, muse, analyse , evaluate and consider the big questions of life like: what is the nature of the universe? or how should I live my life ethically?

Sometimes the application of knowledge and of our thinking lies far away in the future or in the land of ‘never never’.

What is the statement that you may want to make about the experience of studying at university in the twenty-first century?

Most of the time when I think about something I prefer to think about it in a truthful manner , built around information, facts etc so that I have a sense that I am thinking and building some form of truthful knowledge. (There is I know a great debate about claims to truth and veracity but I will put that on hold for now.) Now one of the ways that I can gather these facts, sift through this information and find out more about the world and other people is to talk to lots of people from many different backgrounds and listen to their stories.

One of the opportunities at Murdoch University in a tutorial discussion is for students to find out about each other and the many different cultures that they all come from, yet I have noticed that students tend to end up in groups of ‘like to like’. People who have similar dress styles, similar ages, similar genders, similar cultures etc will tend to sit together. What a loss of opportunity and epistemological pleasures that is!

If, as a general rule in our lives we mainly spend time with and seek others out whose external appearance reflects our own, whose sense of identity is similar to our own, we are limiting our capacity to know and to understand other people and the world generally. and thus my identity can become a trap of solipsism. A trap in which all I will ever know is myself and those who are like me.

watched chimpanzees in the Gombe forest of Africa create a tool with which to gather food. No longer could we use this capacity to define ourselves as distinct and different from other animals.
Perhaps , it is language that makes human being unique amongst animals? but wait, other animals also have complex forms of communication, such as the songs of the humpback whale.song.htm Perhaps, it is that we organise large scale events that makes us humans more than just animals. Events of the size and scale of the Olympic games which costs the host country huge amounts,(report from the BBC)

Plus, participating countries such as Australia spend vast amounts of money and then huge numbers of our young people dedicate years of their life to relentless training and discipline for two weeks every 4 years to compete for glory and status and kudos. But again chimpanzes also spend large amounts of time and energy over establishing status and hierarchy.

Is our focus on: who has the most gold medals? who is the fastest man on earth? just a version of who is the chimp with the biggest… ???
Perhaps, what we can do as human beings is reflect and think critically about why we, as a world civilisation, spend so much of our time, money and effort on swimming faster, jumping higher , kicking a ball more accurately or throwing a ball further, than someone else?? What is that all about? Why do we think it matters?

If you have been caught up in the emotional turmoil of watching “our” athletes, why does it catch your attention? Would you feel the same way if you could watch on TV each week the wonderful heartwarming efforts of aid workers struggling to assist impoverished peoples? Why ? Why not?
How can you critically and creatively reflect on what this olympic event is? For perhaps what we need to focus on is not what distinguishes us from other animals but how much we are like all animals and therefore how much we must try to imagine, reflect on, empathise with others in order to create something different to our current conditions.

what do you think about having a good argument? and why do you think that? When is an argument ‘bad’?