Re: [Phys-L] just for fun

[Sergey Sukhotinsky <s.sukhotinsky@gmail.com>]

John Denker <jsd@av8n.com> wrote:
>  Keep in mind that "check the work" is the foundation-stone of
>  critical thinking.

I may not necessarily be correct as English is not my native language (and
I use it only very occasionally),  I found "critical thinking" to sound
over aggressive. I'd prefer "consistent thinking" instead.

"Critical thinking", as for me, would mean that a person would scan the
outer world for any inconsistency with one mere purpose just to criticize
it to boost up his personal ego. "Consistent thinking" would mean that a
person would try to first humbly negotiate his inner model with the outer
world. If the inconsistency could not be negotiated by adjusting his inner
model, the person would try to raise a flag to find help from a teacher or
community.

I would add "The outstanding teacher negotiates" to the great "The mediocre
teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher
demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." by William Arthur Ward. They are
not too numerous, but still, they are constantly born, young curious minds
with built-in strong inspiration. They don't need to be told, explained or
demonstrated, these days the kind of the stuff they could easily do on
their own.

What they need is an middle-man (an outstanding teacher) to help them
negotiate the mainstream (widely accepted) model with the model developed
by (in) the person. That could be an intricate job considering that "widely
accepted" could be rather questionable postulates.

Just to illustrate the above, from my
http://sukhotinsky.blogspot.com/2013/05/pacific-basin-reconstruction-active.html

"The Americas were "torn away from Europe and Africa . . . by earthquakes
and floods"? That was the suggestion by Abraham Ortelius". A person trying
to think consistently would ask immediately, based on the facts, is not
science about  building a model (concept) first and only then based on the
model trying to predict future or the past.

The most obvious concept would be "Continents could be torn into chunks,
and the chunks could be sent west-eastwards." "The foundation-stone of
critical thinking "check the work"" would apply the concept over the entire
scope (The Earth) and would lead to completely different (to mainstream)
reconstruction of  Pangaea (Gondwana) and would reshape Plate Tectonics
considerably (see the blog post).

A person trying to think consistently would ask how had that happen, all
that great minds had overlooked the inconsistency on the course of 400+
years? Here the outstanding teacher comes to the scene trying negotiate the
model developed by the curious mind with the widely accepted theory. I wish
I knew how to do the intricate job, probably, to point the person to the
famous "Another Brick In The Wall" by Pink Floyd or to the incredible
"Child in Time" by Deep Purple:

Sweet child in time, you'll see the line
Line that's drawn between good and bad
See the blind man shooting at the world
Bullets flying, ooh taking toll
If you've been bad - Oh Lord I bet you have
And you've not been hit oh by flying lead
You'd better close your eyes, bow your head
Wait for the ricochet.

--
Sergey D. Sukhotinsky
sukhotinsky@phystech.edu
weblogs.asp.net/sergeys/
twitter.com/Sukhotinsky