CriticalThinking.com: A Guide to Deep Thinking in a Shallow Age. (2002). Myron Tuman Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press

摘要

The prologue, if not the title and subtitle of Myron Tuman's 2002 book, suggests that the author aims to provide a careful examination of the current uncritical enthusiasm for critical thinking. What Tuman manages to do in his eight measured chapters is contextualize thinking about critical thinking, situating it within the longer history of Western ideas as well as the recent move into a culture shaped by digital tools. Tuman has written and edited earlier essays and books on writing, computers, and culture. This examination of critical thinking is a natural move from earlier investigations about matters such as online literacy. Tuman begins by pointing out that many contemporary guides to critical thinking are modeled on the "For Dummies" series whose first number was published twenty years ago when the personal computer was new and inscrutable (for example, DOS for Dummies). His book, however, is modeled instead on Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and aspires to be a "guide to the complexities of thinking in the new dot.com world of instant access and constant hype" (p. 10). Tuman is skeptical of self-help books and holds that "powerful thinking, like powerful writing is a craft at which one works over a lifetime, and not a mechanical skill that one can attain simply by following a series of steps" (p. 10).