Stoicism, Critical Thinking, and Learning Theory, Essay Example

One of the mainstays of Stoicism is that the world should be accepted as it is because it is the only real source of knowledge. As such, one should experience the world in order to become wiser. Past and current practices of stoicism and how it relates to teaching practices and styles are investigated here.

In the past, Stoicism was dual in nature. One the one end of the dichotomy, followers were expected to maintain rigid control of their emotions; while on the opposite end of the continuum, people were expected to simply “feel” the environment because to understand the world too deeply was to contaminate it with our own thoughts (IEP, 2011). Thus infused, it ceased to be a source of truth. To mitigate this, the Stoic relied on simple observation.

Current ideals about Stoic virtue may be understood through the lenses of observational science (IEP, 2011). The scientist is expected to be unbiased toward his subject. She must only see what her senses allow her to see. Anything else is a confounding bias byproduct of the individual mentality.

Nevertheless, these are extreme positions in any case. Rather, it seems that sensual interaction and cognitive application find common ground in critical thinking (Cognitive Technologies, Inc., 2011). What that means is that empirical observations are mitigated through analytics. Critical thinking allows people to transcend purely sensory observation or purely mental application with methods that test the likelihood of truth between them.

Still, some learning theory only about understands the world, as in research science; while others are about making some changes to the world, as in medicine. These are two seemingly distinct ways of learning, but in fact, they too occupy particularly different places on the same continuum. One is about gaining knowledge while the other is about applying it (Cognitive Technologies, Inc., 2011).

References

Cognitive Technologies, Inc.(2011). A Theory of Critical Thinking. Retrieved from http://www.cog-tech.com/projects/CriticalThinking/CriticalThinkingTheory.htm

IEP. (2011). Stoicism. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/stoicism/