Body of knowledge
metaphors | two ways to organize | means | methods | critical thinking | elements of thought | themes | lessons
Your class content is based
on a method of analysis that examines an enormous
range of descriptive material to shed light on concepts,
great ideas in world history, and facts that reveal crucial
functions of the planet you inhabit.
Corpus,
is the ancient Latin word for body or a tangible, related and
substantial entity.
Core is also derived from the Latin root word cor meaning heart and core, today, means the essential ingredient or central part of the matter or focus on the most important part of a thing under scrutiny.
The core of any tree is still referred to as the "heart wood" around which the body of the tree accumulates to support the trunk, limbs and leaves from which come flowers and seeds.
Distinct but related concepts form what is a core of any body of knowledge based on discoveries that tie fundamental concepts to theories that make sense of the facts. Some examples of this such as biology and history are such wide subjects that they share similar perspectives if not common details relating to disease or economics of agriculture.
Pyramid of certainty about what we know.
Core discoveries (initial peak) that form the important substance of any body of knowledge lead to peripheral explorations (ripples) of related information at the edges or boundaries (subsequent peaks) of other fields, called liminal studies, because these investigations of questions lie at the extreme edges of what is known. Liminal inquiries explore the spaces between existing bodies of discoverable and comprehensible details.
Often a discovery in one field such as history leads to new subsidiary bodies of knowledge; in this case the study of history gave rise to political science, economics, sociology and psychology in the 1880s.
Two different ways of organizing knowledge in separate realms or distinct fields:
Ways to unify these three existing bodies of knowledge --the community, the environment, and the economy-- are crucial for solving the health problems inherent in human societies.
Metaphors are crucial for comprehending the content of my classes. For example:
Nature actively becomes that over which we cannot ever attain any mastery; a web of relations emerging contingently and cooperatively out of the horn of time.
A model of nature's internal structure
Nature, John Donne said, "is the law by which God governs...."
Nature is creation consisting of those processes that, if untended by humans, would refashion each place, then as these changes accumulate they may --in their combined effects-- alter the planet.
Nature is organized into separate levels; almost like boxes inside of other bigger boxes. But I prefer to envision it most simply as a stairway.
Nature is a palimpsest or a layered manuscript because it is a word with variant meanings
Nature can mean a relation [& there is an index of related topics here].
Nature escapes our full comprehension because it is a process of being on multiple scales of organization simultaneously.
The scale of organization from atoms, to molecules, to organisms, to planets in solar systems imposes an order to reality that is so definitive that real knowledge must account for the emergent complexity that arises out of one level that does not predict in any way the features on a related level of form and function. These worlds within worlds complicate our comprehension and can test the veracity of the related concepts that we use to co-create a body of knowledge.
Dialectical thinking
This concept is derived from philosophy and was one of the original liberal arts from from the Medieval period. While it refers to a widespread form of argumentation, there is a more specific meaning used here as a process that forms the underlying means to state, compare and analyze any ideas.
Plato, whose dialogues display the dialectical technique, attributes this process to Socrates, who in any inquiry, interrogated listeners by presenting the direct opposite or antagonistic idea to the concepts that his participants professed. The tree diagram above is called a Pythagorean fractal and it is made up of a forking path into two divergent paths at each junction, visually the figure conveys the subsequent consequences of choices made using a dichotomous (either, or) approach to understanding complex concepts, or classifying different types of information.
Sites related to the concept of dialectic: antonyms | dialogue is essential in technology | dialectical though demonstrated.
Critical thinking
I think, therefore I am.
Rene Descartes
By one, understanding metaphors and two, by applying a dialectical approach
to explaining the degrees of certainty to uncertainty of what we know, you will
be taking the initial steps, in my classes, towards my goal of allowing you
to practice critical thinking.
This goal allows you to practice critical thinking in order to improve your
confidence in expressing facts, interpretations, opposing arguments, spectrums
of opinions and the simple propositions that lead to more complex patterns in
the elements of thought.
The wheel at the right is a conceptual model of two researchers in the field of critical thinking, Drs. Linda Elder and Richard Paul (at www.criticalthinking.org). They seek to standardize the natural habit of though we all engage in because they are of the opinion that "much of our thinking," if not subject to scrutiny, "is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced." (p.1, Critical Thinking; concepts and tools," 2003) The wheel, above, suggests that by entering the process of reflection at any segment --separated by spokes-- you complete the circuit in order to test what you believe, discover, or construct.
Elder and Paul argue that "critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking." (Ibid.) But even this definition requires a better understanding. So I suggest that critical thinking is reasoning by use of a reflective means that employs explainable criteria to making,determining, or resolving uncertainties about what we know.
| The Elements of Thought |
perspectives |
|
| 1 | Points of View | frame of reference, orientation, or perspective. |
| 2 | Purpose of thought | objectives, or outcomes expected, end or "teleos." |
| 3 | Question at issue | matters (being debated), problem, contentions. |
| 4 | Information | data, facts, observations, experiences, accounts. |
| 5 | Interpretation & Inference | stories, working hypothesis, tentative solutions, ideas. |
| 6 | Concepts | theories, definitions, axioms, principles, models, laws. |
| 7 | Assumptions | unexamined beliefs, biases, presuppositions, story line. |
| 8 | Implications & Consequences | underlying impacts, ultimate costs & benefits, lessons. |
While these eight "elements of thought" are pieces of the pie comprising critical thinking, according to these authors, they correspond favorably with my simple approach to class work, writing and research. I call the simple approach "Core," or an acronym to recall that every endeavor is divided into four related parts clarify, organize, reflect, examine; the first letters of each word spelling core.
| A simple approach "CORE," | The Elements of Thought | |
|
Clarify
|
1 | Points of View |
| 2 | Purpose of thought | |
|
Organize |
3 | Question at issue |
| 4 | Information | |
|
Reflect |
5 | Interpretation & Inference |
| 6 | Concepts | |
|
Examine |
7 | Assumptions |
| 8 | Implications & Consequences | |
By comparing and contrasting the views of authors and schools of thought, my classes allow you to discover some means that is apparent to others, for you to think for yourself.
Patterns and recognizing dimensions of places.
Argumentation and methods of inquiry.
Synergy, complexity and order.
Surface and hidden qualities (form and function).
Imagination in seeing the inorganic and organic foundations of existence (ecology).
Organic evolution and the descent from a common ancestry.
Negation as a needed dialectical process for confirming doubts and veracity.
What if, after a dialectical process of scrutiny the evidence is insufficient to come to a certain conclusion, Neils Bohr certainly realized this when he and Einstein debated the relative merits of light being either a wave, or a particle. Could it be that light behaves as both waves and particles?
There is always a lesson to be learned like the moral of a story. In the case of my classes I ask you to not merely describe concepts, but to pursue a method of inquiry to reveal the dialectical means we have to critically think about knowledge in order to honestly inform ourselves and others.
This way you may decide for yourself, neither being a slave to your biases, nor a prisoner of other people's naive assumptions, but becoming a worthy servant of discovery, inquiry and verity.
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