A Definition of Critical Thinking

An anatomy of critical thinking yields three primary components: mind, body spirit. Each is defined below.

• Mind. The mind of critical thinking? The universal intellectual standards, or ground rules as outlined by Paul (2009), including: clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth and logic.

• Body. The body of critical thinking? The scientific literature, research and scholarly works of "critical practitioners" (Paul, 2009; Elder & Cosgrove, 2007).

• Spirit. Essentially, the spirit of critical thinking is humility. Integrated with this "self-regulatory" (Paul, 2009) spirit there appears a deep passion that is espoused by critical thinking experts such as Paul (2009) who teach "we should be taught to be intellectually humble." Integrated with real life, the spirit of critical thinking flows through the lives of effective parents, educators, scientific researchers, and wiki editors and contributors (Elder & Cosgrove, 2007; Connerly, 2006; Paul, 2009; Shirky, 2008). The spirit of critical thinking is reflected in the intimate relationship between Rushi's ("old teacher") and their students deepening a practice of meditation and mindfulness and dedicated parents (Aitken,1982; Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Elder & Cosgrove, 2007).

This fascinating critical spirit flows from the human heart of individuals, familys, universities and institutions, where ever it represents a core, or "terminal value" (Rokeach,1973), including the community of contributing editors to the ever-growing body of critical thinking literature peppered throughout Wikipedia (Shirky, 2008) and the world wide web.

The above blog is condensed from the paper written for Fielding Graduate University media psychology program titled Anatomy of Critical Thinking, inspired by the following references cited above.