• Blog
  • About
  • Archives

elemental links

brenda michelson's technology advisory practice

11 Rules for Critical Thinking via Brain Pickings

December 22, 2013 By brenda michelson

From the fantastic Brain Pickings:

“Dubbed Prospero’s Precepts, these eleven rules culled from some of history’s greatest minds can serve as a general-purpose guideline for critical thinking in all matters of doubt:

  1. All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)
  2. Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)
  3. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)
  4. Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)
  5. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
  6. A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)
  7. The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)
  8. To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)
  9. It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)
  10. Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)
  11. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)”

via Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? 11 Rules for Critical Thinking | Brain Pickings.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: links, thinking styles Tagged With: archive_0, stream

Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

Trusted Advisor.

(BIO)

  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Experts Sketch
  • PEW Research: Tech Saturation, Well-Being and (my) Remedies
  • technology knowledge premise
  • The Curse of Knowledge
  • better problems and technology knowledge transfer

Recent Tweets

  • “…where the process of drawing itself can take us. We can follow a suggestion, a squiggle, shadow, or smudge, and s… https://t.co/oRg0x2LoXG November 30, 2022 5:05 pm
  • On the waiting list for Post, join me (on the waitlist) via https://t.co/U8wYK707f6 November 24, 2022 4:17 pm
  • Meet the longtime librarian being honored at the National Book Awards : NPR https://t.co/S44VQeJg83 November 13, 2022 2:51 pm
© 2004-2022 Elemental Links, Inc.
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.