How to Think About Weird Things : Critical Thinking for a New Age
Author: Theodore Schick, Lewis Vaughn
Editor: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
Year: 2004
This is a most readable and mind-opening introductory text to critical thinking, with particular focus on logical and scientific thinking. The authors state that this work is essentially a volume on "applied epistemelogy." (1999, p. 235) It ought to be mandatory reading for high school and university students.
Lots of real life examples. Subjects tackled include logic and fallacies, pseudoscience, relativism, philosophy of science, the Forer effect, perceptual constancies, confirmation bias, expectation, availability error, criteria of adquacy in evaluating hypotheses, placebo effect.
All throughout the text the authors have highlighted (literally) certain guidelines that bear committing to memory. Among the 35 the more notable ones are:
"Just because you can't explain something doesn't mean that it's supernatural." (21)
"When evaluating a claim, look for disconfirming as well as confirming evidence." (137)
"A hypothesis is scientific only if it is testable, that is, only if it predicts something other than what it was introduced to explain." (161)
"Other things being equal, the best hypothesis is the one that is the most conservative, that is, the one that fits best with established beliefs." (170)
Chapter 8 is devoted to guidelines and criteria for assessing claimed medical treatments. This is essential reading for all, since nowhere else do we fumble more egregiously in our judgement than in the evaluation of cures, treatments, and therapies.
In Chapter 9 the authors introduce what they call the SEARCH formula, an "arbitrary and artificial" (as they admit) acronym for a 4-step procedure in evaluating claims/hypotheses. It consists of Stating the claim, examining the Evidence, considering Alternative hypotheses, and Rating according the the Criteria of adequacy each Hypothesis. Lessons learned in the previous chapters are applied using such phenomena as homeopathy, dowsing, alien abduction, channeling, and near-death experiences.
An appendix lists some informal fallacies. It is a good enough primer; however, it is incomplete. For a more comprehensive list of fallacies there are various websites and other titles to turn to.
Schick and Vaughn in their introduction state that their book is about "how to test the truth or reality of some of the most influential, mysterious, provocative, bewildering puzzles we can ever experience. It's about how to think clearly and critically about what we authors have dubbed 'weird things'--all the unusual, awesome, wonderful, bizarre, and antic happenings, real or alleged, that bubble up out of science, pseudoscience, the occult, the paranormal, the mystic, and the miraculous." (2) I believe the authors succeed in supplying their readers with basic tools with which to test "weird" claims.
I highly recommend this book. Understanding and keeping in mind the lessons that Shick and Vaughn provide adequately equips us to become critical thinkers.
Rate: 10/10
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