Art of Thinking, The (9th Edition) (Paperback)

~ Vincent R. Ruggiero (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Accessible and engaging, this unique text offers concrete, practice strategies for critical and creative thinking and includes many opportunities for practicing these fundamental skills.

 

The Art of Thinking introduces students to the principles and techniques of critical thinking, taking them step-by-step through the problem-solving process. Emphasizing creative and active thought processes, the author asserts that good thinking and problem-solving is based on learnable strategies. The book's four parts, “Be Aware,” “Be Creative,” “Be Critical,” and “Communicate Your Ideas,” present students with a process for solving problems and resolving controversial issues. Discussions of how to evaluate ideas and how to question long-held assumptions or biases help students look at concepts critically. This text can be used in freshman experience courses, freshman composition courses, and a wide array of other courses where instructors want to enhance students' critical thinking skills.

From the Back Cover

Accessible and engaging, this unique book offers strategies for critical and creative thinking and includes many opportunities for practicing these skills. This book is a comprehensive guide to critical and creative thinking that also shows readers how to persuade others. By introducing readers to the principals and techniques of creative thinking and how to evaluate their own ideas and the ideas of others, The Art of Thinking, 6/e presents readers with a step-by-step process for problem solving. For anyone interested in exploring critical and creative thinking. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Longman; 9 edition (November 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 020566833X
• ISBN-13: 978-0205668335
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #518,834 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insights on How "Thinking" Works, September 2, 2003

By	paul_cheng "K.F." (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought (6th Edition) (Paperback)

This title was the first text book I used in my first ever philosophy class at college some 20 years ago. It really inspired me to start "thinking" about how people think. The flow of the topics and the content successfully aroused my mind and the book actually helped me a lot on ways of thinking even until now. I just want to let everyone know that this title is an excellent read for teenagers to adults alike.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Art of Thinking, August 3, 2001

By	Prof. Adam Davis "[e-mail]" (Kirksville, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought (Paperback)

I am much taken with the approach to thinking as an activity with its own structure, a structure which once articulated can be effectively mapped onto its expressions in writing and speech. One of the things that concerns me very deeply about students, and it's perhaps just a cultural moment (but a long one, with no end in sight) is a presumption of determinism concerning their own ways of thinking. It's visible in the grammatical structures they use to describe current practices: "I'm not much of a reader;" "I need to be entertained to find a book worthwhile" -- they even extend it to the legibility of their handwriting. Ruggiero's assumption that one can modify the nature of one's thinking by a process of examination, insight and will, is bound to be liberating. In fact, it's a time honored principle of western intellectual and spiritual traditions, but not well suited to social constructivist models of cognition and composition in their cruder forms. The advice to "be creative" would be spectacularly useless without the quite accessible, though not at all reductive, inquiry into certain definable features of thought-processes which result in things we generally regard as pretty good creative thinking. The approach of the book overall has both conservative and innovative aspects, and as a totality it gains my respect. It assumes a reasonable tone of authority, and validates the claim by proceeding intelligibly through a jargon-free but theoretically sound account of the various processes we designate by "thinking," and distinguishing purposeful thinking from other kinds of mental activity. With the exception of a few unfortunate tics that have a certain unpleasant, 19th century tang to them ("bad habits" is not a phrase consistent with the overall tone of Ruggiero's book), the text communicates high expectations, and makes the attainment of them attractive to students.

On the whole, the exercises provide a pedagogically useful range for leading students through issues in which their own interests are directly and obviously involved, through analogy and homology to issues of wider cultural import, where the need for their own policy input may seem less urgent, and their own interests less directly involved. A sort of school for citizenship, if it works, and that is certainly among the explicit objectives of my own writing pedagogy. It's a good book for students who need to become comfortable with the idea of themselves as intellectuals, and who are overcoming the sociology of high school, which tends to assign intellectual ambitions to authority and its lackeys, and to have a fairly muddy- headed notion that purposeless consumption is a kind of political expression. I think the book will work best with bright students who have been underchallenged in the past.

The ethos of the book is competent, analytical (but not cold or sterile), not given to a lot of self-discourse. There are hints here and there that the author feels that the language of affect has come to overshadow patterns of reasoning in recent rhetorical history. The order of presentation is not inevitable -- nor does it claim to be -- but rational, and adaptable to a number of pedagogical purposes. It's not meant to be all things for all courses, and some instructors may find that they need compositional matters more explicitly and consistently frontloaded -- but then, they'll want a full-scale reader with a handbook of grammar and usage as well. Since this is the 6th edition, there must be a great many teaches who find this book useful, but I suppose I'm (pleasantly) surprised that a text this challenging finds a consistent niche.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading For Any True Thinker, April 9, 2006

By	Eliberto Villarreal III "Be able to see that ... (Grand Prairie, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought (7th Edition) (Paperback)

Ruggiero has written the best book to date on critical thinking, in a time when it is most needed. There is clarity in his writing that is rare and required to hold the attention of those without critical skills.

Some of the critics claim that this book is "insulting to their intelligence". They should remember that you cannot insult intelligence, only pride. The book is clear and very direct in its presentation.

Other critics have attacked Ruggiero's appeal to control your emotions in making proper judgments. Its was Aristotle who said, "The young overdo everything. They love too much, hate too much, & the same with everything else." This is not saying that passion should be taken from all aspects of life. Alternatively, to use a contemporary example that the young can relate to, Stephen Colbert taught the young about the word "truthiness". Truthiness is the marriage of emotion and logic.

Every year it is reported how American students are falling further behind students of other countries. This world has real problems and these problems are very complex. The current generation lacks these skills; the next generation needs these skills in order to fix the mess that we have made. The pop culture that has surround the minds of our youth, originally conceived to develop the economy, has turned our people into unthinking followers.

The United States is the most powerful nation in the world, but power without critical thinking leaders is the most dangerous situation that we could throw ourselves into. Intelligence without power is worthless, save its influence. The United States has the power, resources, and the schools to produce something that has never happen in the history of this world; a chance to bring about the conditions for world peace.

Every political disaster that the United States has endured can be traced to the lack of use of these skills. The Art of Thinking should be required reading every year, over and over. Printed and scattered in every hotel room. And memorized before allowed to run for public office.

In the time we refer to as the Dark Ages, rhetoric was required to even be considered for a degree. Let us complement our technology with intelligence, let us balance our power with justice.