ALEX-BOOKS

Currently for sale on Amazon Kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/Alex-Coutts

Be a Thinker

This book will deal with certain strategies and processes of thinking, and the critical and creative cognitive operations that underlie them. The writer intends stripping away the often threatening terminology and academic complexities of the cognitive field, and will present the step-like algorithms and heuristics of thinking in a digestible and unthreatening way. The author has designed the book to be clear and readable. It should prove suitable for anyone who has a fair command of language, and a willingness to engage with thinking as a conscious, critical tool rather than as an obscure, mystical enterprise. Students, scholars and teachers should find it especially useful, and perhaps valuable. . The author analyses critical thinking that emphasizes rational, logical thought. He also covers creative thought in which thinkers generate and test diverse, innovative ideas to devise some new creation. Whether the thinking is convergent, in which case the subject narrows down to a single good idea, or divergent, in which case the thinker generates and pursues a range of ideas, there is always an emphasis on relationships, associations and connections. Accordingly, the thinking processes deal with solving problems and devising fresh and exciting creations in the complex contexts in which they occur. To ease understanding, the writer reduces intricate processes of thinking to logical steps. Here, a correct or optimal order or sequencing is important. Although one can gain insights into thinking processes quite rapidly as result of reflecting purposefully on them, to become proficient as a thinker demands serious, focused commitment in the long term. During the past half-century, and the last decade in particular, research into the human mind (and especially cognition), has surged and expanded. The interested reader should also delve into the many other academic and practical works emerging. Many comprise detailed and tested courses of study. To engage with a study of thinking in general, and one's own thinking in particular, is an absorbing and enormously rewarding journey. It is, however, a very long haul with few 'quick fixes'.