TOK May.

13, 2013 2nd Monthly Essay Prescribed title #1: Knowledge is generated through the interaction of critical and creative thinking. Evaluate this statement in two areas of knowledge. On the vicissitude of the history of thoughts enormous explanations and studies are created, some stays and some fades away. We refer to these visions that lasts as truth or knowledge. Where do they come from? One may say that the knowledge we encounter is just simply bliss of genius in somebodys mind at some moment, but its not always the case; the claims and explanations dont appear to be products of pure logical induction, either. The two ways of creating knowledge (or two ways of knowing) mentioned above can be characterized as creative thinking and critical thinking, respectively. Creative thinking is how people come up with new ideas and originals claims or to propose a new way to look or examine things and ideas. These ideas or claims should jump out of the previous trends and they should be original. On the other hand, critical thinking is the logical reflection upon existing premises, claims, believes, and actions. It is true that both method of thinking can create statements and claims on its own, but the statements generated purely from creative thinking are inevitably arbitrary and logically imperfect; those came out of only critical thinking, too, could be lacking abilities to solve new issues, and they are easily balked by paradoxes and unpredictable uncertainties. Rigorous and self-coherent knowledge is gradually corrected and improved overtime, by an interaction of various perspectives and insights an interaction between creative thinking and critical thinking. In the following parts of my essay I will explain how such interaction generates knowledge in the AOKs of physics and music.

There is a philosophy theory that explains such interaction. German

philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770~1831) points out that the trend of human knowledge is one long chain of reflections. 1 These chains of reflections follow certain rules: a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. As soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. Tension arises between the two opposite ideas, which leads to a series of critical arguments between them. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process. Hegel refers to these three stages of dialectic process of knowledge as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. When somebody comes up with a new thought, a new theory, a thesis, it is creative thinking that he implemented. However such thesis may not be necessarily correct or valid, whereas the antithesis appears. People then use critical thinking to examine the thesis, critically, objectively, and logically. As the tension between the two sides escalate, there will be a fusion of the two ideas that soothes the conflict and embed the truth within both the thesis and antithesis, and thus new knowledge is created. One of the most typical examples for a thesis-antithesis-synthesis paradigm shift in natural science, physics, in particular, is the discussion over the nature of light. Before the 20th century light has been always recognized as electromagnetic waves, because the classic experiments proved that light can be diffracted and can interfere with itself). On the other hand, the photoelectric effect and the Compton effect (which showed that light gives discrete amount of energy and the energy transition is not a cumulative process) have also put the particle theory of light on a firm experimental basis. 2 These two theories are logically incompatible, but both have been shown to have validitythey are both products of critical thinking based on well-controlled experiment observations. Then innovativeness and creative thinking start to play their roles, as critical thinking seems to be in a dilemma. A brand new idea of wave-particle duality is brought up to the scientists views: such paradox is a fundamental property of the universe, and light, in its entirety, is a more complex phenomenon than just a

simple wave or a simple beam of particles. Such subversive theory became the core of quantum mechanics, and set the cornerstone for the latter development of modern physics. But the story doesn't end with wave-particle duality. The duality synthesis now becomes the point of departure for another chain of reflections. (In fact, Stephen Hawking suggested with his string theory that light is a gathering of energy that has string-like behavior. This theory explained some behavior of light in the strong gravitational fields that is not explained previously.) A synthesis will also be contradicted by a new antithesis, by the critical thoughts of the later generations. From this example we can see that creative thinking and critical thinking is corporative and complementary, that one can give rise to another and thus stimulates the process of discovering (or creating) knowledge. The process of continually self-correction is referred to as paradigm shifts or revolutionary science: by definition, it is the process in which previous knowledge claims are disproved and replaced by new knowledge claims. 3 Revolutionary science suggests the presence of critical thinking, and it serves to disagree, and then improve the knowledge we obtain from creative thinking. Hegel's dialectic theory is not only applicable to natural sciences. People, in fact, naturally perceive statements dialectically: We try to find flaws in the argument. This is the critical thinking process evoked by creative thinking when we find flaws in an argument; we abandon the flawed parts and preserve the best of it. In the areas of arts and music, the gradual shifts of style also prove the presence of the interaction between the critical and creative ways of thinking. Although music is generally viewed as a form of art in which creativity is of paramount, critical thinking and systematic logic played an important role in the development of classical art music. The Baroque period (1600~1750) is considered as the most crucial period of western art musics development. During the 150 years the first complete system of musical theory is established, the study of musical formality is first set up, and the notations for different instruments are first standardized. The early Baroque period served as a watershed: it transferred

European music from idiomatic folk tune and religious hymns into a rigorous system with set structures, standardized harmonies, and systematic melodic progression. The late Baroque pieces, such as the pieces of Bach, sounds like exquisite and complex architecture works for me because of its integration of logical algorithms and critical thinking with his creative inspirations. The theories helped us to understand how pleasing music is constructed, whereby gaining knowledge of composing and appreciating music. These theories constructed by Baroque composers are later on used in 20th century psychology explorations to show how human emotions and reaction can be affected by a certain set of perception stimulus. In this case, the psychology study can be considered as a critical reflection upon the creativity of music theories. Such psychological discoveries in terms fueled the wave of elaborated expressions of late romantic / 20 century art music. The composers experimented various uncommon musical expressions that are said to have psychological significance in their compositions, implementing tinnitus voices, heartbeat-like rhythms and even everyday noises into their composition. I view these experiments as creative approaches to the researches mentioned above. Through this chain of critical & creative reflections we gain more knowledge about the relationship between the arts and ourselves. I have examined the role of creative-critical thinking interaction in the context of two distinct area of knowledgephysics and musicin order to show how such interaction can generate knowledge. In my opinion, the two ways of thinking are the two alternative progresses that together create a chain reflection, with which knowledge is created, revised, and improved. It has to be noted that the concept of creative and critical thinking is neither definite nor exclusive by this I mean that the critical reflection upon one statement can also be a creative solution at the same time, like thesis and antithesis and their synthesis: their relationship in relative. There also might be other ways of thinking that can contribute to the creation of knowledge, subversive thinking, for example. It is also true that in different areas of knowledge critical thinking and

creative thinking are used to different extent, people rely on creative thinking to introduce new ideas and new statements and rely on critical thinking to prevent people from making inaccurate or invalid arguments and suggest improvements to be made for previous statements. As the claims been continually improved as the tensions between thesis and antithesis resolve, knowledge is generated.

Word Count: 1445

Bibliography: 1. Gaarder, Jostein. "Hegel" Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. N. pag. 356-367 Print. 2. "Quantum Mechanics: Wave-particle Duality of Light." Physics Giancoli: Principles with Applications - Instructor Solutions Manual. Ed. Parson Prentice Hall. N.p.: pag. 692 Print. 3. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. page 40, 41