Quote:
Originally Posted by deltawar567
I want to become a better critical thinker for my team, I want to pursue being a mechanical engineer for a career and I have come up with some good/great ideas but I think I could do better. I think I might just need to refine my math and science skills.
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I know this sounds weird, but the best thing I learned about being a critical thinker for science was something I learned in church. I'm a cradle Episcopalian, and I learned there that it is actually more important to understand and be able to clearly state the question than it is to know the answers.
In science and engineering and mathematics, once the question is clearly stated, it becomes a much simpler method to determine whether the problem at hand already has a known solution, or whether it can be "transformed" into a problem with a known solution.
The bottom line (at least I think I'm done for a bit) is that critical thinking and creative thinking are complementary skills. If you can master either, and be competent at the other, you won't have any problem keeping food on the table. If you can master both, the world is your oyster.
And of course, you need to have the math/science/engineering skills to work through all of those ideas that seem like they should work to figure out whether they are sure things, actually might work, or are doomed from the get-go.
All that said, cultivating "promiscuous correlation" of ideas still leads more quickly to a workable solution (at least for me) than critical thinking. At least for me, the key to this is learning to suppress the peer-pressure lesson which makes you ignore "stupid" ideas too early. Sometimes a "stupid" idea that doesn't let go is the key to a "genius" idea.
Of course, as you noted, you need to have the math/science/engineering skills to determine whether that idea that seems to work in your head is a sure thing, a possibility, or a non-starter.
The bottom line (at least I think I'm done for a while) is that creativity and critical thinking are complementary skills. If you can master either and be competent at the other, you'll never have any problem keeping food on the table. If you can master both, the world is your oyster.