Thinking as a Science [Paperback]

Henry Hazlitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2007

It's incredible that this 1916 tutorial on how to think, by none other than Henry Hazlitt, would still hold up after all these years. But here's why. Hazlitt was largely self-educated. He read voraciously. He trained himself to be a great intellect. In the middle of this process, he discovered that it is far more important to learn to think clearly than to merely take in information. The result was this book.

In some ways, it is a course in logic. But more than that, it is a training manual for how to fire up and manage one's mental energy.

He discusses how to think about analogies and discover their errors. He speaks of the error of too much aggregation and misplaced definitions. He presents the rules for the interplay between theory and example. He shows how to spot errors in theory and experiments. He shows how to think all the way to the end of a problem. He gives some very practical advice on the relationship between thinking and reading - and how to plan that reading so that one uses one's time well.

His examples of how to think and how not to think are lucid and compelling. His influences in this little book include Stanley Jevons and Herbert Spencer, so we can see here that Hazlitt was already steeped in economics literature when he wrote this book in 1916.

It remains an excellent primer in how to gain, and make use of, a good education.

259 page, paperback, 2008

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute (2007)
• ASIN: B001BYG7SS
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,549,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, Inspiring, Thought provoking!, February 19, 2009

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ae - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Thinking as a Science (Paperback)

It is a book written by a brilliant young man in his early twenties, almost a century ago, but is still up to date. As such, it has a refreshing and bold style. His objective is to put the process of reasoning into a scientific framework by organizing different methods with which one can improve his/her thinking efficacy.

He provides a new perspective on concentration by defining it as the process of persistently moving towards a well-defined objective rather than fixating one's thought on a static object. He also provides interesting discussions on debate/conversation, prejudice/uncertainty, reading and writing to help thinking. His list of further reading material in the last chapter of the book is of great value, even a century after it was written, which also indicates the long lasting value of this great piece of work.

This book is my primary travel companion, and it succeeds in provoking new thoughts almost every time I skim through it. Thus, I recommend it to all those who wish to make better use of the "human machine" :)

PS - Later on (53 years after its publication), Hazlitt has written of his thoughts on how to improve upon this book. An outline of these thoughts are presented in "The wisdom of Henry Hazlitt", pp 45-78, which is available online at http://mises.org/books/wisdom.pdf

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, March 8, 2005

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Cuban007 (Miami, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Thinking as a Science (Paperback)

Thinking As A Science has an excellent chapter on concentration. It also has some wonderful insights as to how we think and how we can improve our thinking. The downside of the book is that the beginning chapters are somewhat boring b/c they deal with methods of thinking that are very scientific. But once you reach the concentration chapter the book is great.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Useful, February 16, 2011

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Erez Davidi (Tel Aviv, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thinking as a Science (Paperback)

Thinking as a Science by Henry Hazlitt, (who is mostly famous for the book Economics in One Lesson) was written when his was only 20 years old. Quite an impressive achievement.

Have you ever thought about how you should read a book and what is the best method in by which knowledge can be obtained from it? In Thinking as a Science, Hazlitt provides some great answers (and practical methods) exactly for such questions. The chapter "Thinking and Reading" is quite illuminating and highly recommended for the serious reader. Only this chapter is well worth the entire book.

Although, overall this book is far from being perfect, a few chapters in the book are worth the time and a lot of good thinking techniques can be obtained from them .As a follow-up, highly recommended reading is Elementary Lessons in Logic: Deductive and Inductive by William Stanley Jevons.