One of the better books I have come across on critical thinking is the book titled, ‘The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking.’
The authors are Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird. Each mathematicians, which is interesting it itself.
While the book is small, 150 pages, it is condensed to the pure quality content. No fluff, or fillers I can see.
The authors utilize the five elements, earth, water, wind, fire, and air to create similes in explaining the five elements of effective thinking.
What are these 5 Elements?
The Elements include understand deeply, fail to succeed, be your own Socrates, look back-look forward, and transform yourself.
For this article, I wanted to briefly cover each while promoting the book itself.
Understand Deeply
The concept to understand deeply implies ‘to know your stuff.’ Then really apply yourself to understand it, from the very basics.
Basically a solid unshakable foundation.
The authors uses Earth to symbolize this aspect of effective thinking.
Fail to Succeed
Make mistakes to learn. There is no way around making mistakes as you grow in understanding. In fact the authors push the individual to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. The key is to learn from them.
The authors use Fire as this element, due to the destructive power, and usefulness.
Be Your Own Socrates
He who asks questions remains a fool for five minutes. He who does not ask remains a fool forever.
Raising questions is necessary within this element. I would add, asking the right questions. While no question is dumb, don’t keep repeating it.
The authors use Air due to the raising questions, while reviewing.
Look Back and Look Forward
When you understand the current ideas, additional flow of new ideas comes into light. This back and forth of flowing ideas finds us here. You may be interested in my article on Negative Visualization.
Another way to think about this is understanding the simple idea. Then allowing it to evolve to a more complicated idea.
The authors uses Water for this element, due to the flowing of ideas.
Transform Yourself
This final element involves engaging or accepting change. As we change our thinking to be more effective, we are changing ourselves to become more critical and effective.
The final element used is the Quintessential element. Quintessential is defined as representing the most perfect or typical example of quality or class.
Interestingly, one will never become perfect. However, the goal is to aspire to be quintessential .