The relationship between criticality and creativity is commonly misunderstood. Critical and creative thought are both achievements of thought. Creativity masters a process of making or producing, criticality a process of assessing or judging. The very definition of the word “creative” implies a critical component (e.g., “having or showing imagination and artistic or intellectual inventiveness”). When engaged in high-quality thought, the mind must simultaneously produce and assess, both generate and judge the products it fabricates. In short, sound thinking requires both imagination and intellectual standards. Throughout this guide, authors Paula and Elder elaborate on the essential idea that intellectual discipline and rigor are at home with originality and productivity, and also that these supposed poles of thinking (critical and creative thought) are inseparable aspects of excellence of thought. Whether we are dealing with the most mundane intellectual acts of the mind or those of the most imaginative artist or thinker, the creative and the critical are interwoven. It is the nature of the mind to create thoughts, though the quality of that creation varies enormously from person to person, as well as from thought to thought. Achieving quality requires standards of quality — and hence, criticality.
Paul and Elder believe that creative thinking, especially, must be demystified and brought down to earth. For this reason, they deal with it in this guide not only in terms of its highest manifestation (in the work of geniuses), but also in its most humble manifestations (in everyday perception and thought). These authors argue that if people are to understand critical and creative thought truly and deeply, they should recognize these two phenomena as inseparable, integrated, and unitary.
The authors suggest that to live productively, people need to internalize and use intellectual standards to assess their thinking (criticality). People also need to generate — through creative acts of the mind — the products to be assessed. This guide thus introduces and elaborates the connection between critical and creative thought, from a conceptual perspective.
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