Creative And Critical Thinking

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.0rg/details/creativecriticalOOOOmoor Creative and Critieal Thinking W. EDGAR MOORE CHAIKMAN, DEPAKTMENT UNIVERSITY HOUGHTON COLLEGE • OF COMPREHENSIVE UNIVERSITY OF LOGIC FLORIDA COMPANY New York Atlanta Geneva, III. Dallas Palo Alto BOSTON Be VOS .\A1'Z Developed from APPLIED LOGIC by Winston W. Little, W. Harold Wilson, and W. Edgar Moore With the Assistance of The Staff of Comprehensive Logic University College • University of Florida Paul T. Thurston George R. Bentley Gerald B. Standley William C. Childers William E. Kline Mama V. Brady Frank Sciadini Morton Wolf son COPYRIGHT © COPYRIGHT © COPYRIGHT © 1955 1967 1966, 1965 BY W. EDGAR MOORE BY WILLIAM EDGAR MOORE BY WINSTON W. LITTLE, W. HAROLD WILSON AND W. EDGAR MOORE All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. Printed in the U.S.A. Preface Creative and Critical Thinking is the outgrowth of long experimentation with a course in eflFective thinking which has been an integral part of the general education program at the University of Florida since 1935. We believe that a course devoted exclusively to the development of effective thinking is as neces¬ sary as a basic course in English or mathematics. While students can and do improve their thinking through the study of such courses as English, mathe¬ matics, physical science, and social science, the typical instructor is too hard pressed by the demands of subject matter to spare more than an occasional moment for improving thinking. We believe that effective thinking is too com¬ plex a process to be adequately treated as an adjunct to a course devoted primarily to other subject matter, and too important in our civilization to be relegated to spare moments. A course devoted exclusively to effective thinking, together with all the attention instructors in other courses can spare, is none too much. This text was developed from Applied Logic, first published in 1955. In Applied Logic our purpose was to present a text that would have a real influ¬ ence on the life of the student by developing intellectual skills he could put to practical use in solving the myriad problems which confront him throughout life. To that end we changed the content and emphases of the traditional logic course. To the formal and material fallacies we added the devices of persuasion commonly used in advertising and propaganda. We attempted to simplify the traditional treatment of deduction and make it more effective in improving both the student’s deductive skill and his precision in the interpretation of language. We also tried to make the standard techniques of induction more concrete and specific. In the belief that any realistic approach to induction must embrace the theory of probability, we included an elementary treatment of probability and used it to clarify certain problems in induction. From the behavioral sciences we drew materials relevant to subjective factors in thinking. Our assumption was that insight into such subjective factors as emotion, preju¬ dice, and cultural influence is a necessary part of sound thinking. Comments from thousands of students encouraged us to believe that our objectives were accomplished to some degree. Consequently we planned to mike only minor revisions in Applied Logic. But as work on the revision pro¬ ceeded, we became convinced that the educational needs of college students had changed so much that major revisions were desirable. The explosion of knowledge, the increasing tendency of techni