Critical Thinking, Science, And Pseudoscience: Why We Can't Trust Our Brains

Description

This text for undergraduate courses in critical thinking across disciplines uses the intriguing and appealing exploration of pseudoscience to apply these principles and skills. Providing an accessible foundation of what critical thinking is, why it's important, and how to apply these skills, the book explores the psychological and social reasons of why human beings tend to find credence in extraordinary claims. The book then shows how critical thinking skills are used to evaluate specific pseudoscientific arenas by applying scientific methods from various disciplines. From alien abductions, ghosts, and psychic phenomena to historical revisionism and unsupported medical and mental health treatments, this intriguing book uses examples form a wide range of pseudoscience fields and brings evidence from diverse fields as psychology, biology, and physics to critically examine these claims. Authored by a psychologist and a philosopher who have extensive experience teaching and writing on critical thinking and skeptical inquiry, this work is a lively text for courses in critical thinking and the phenomenon of pseudoscience across multiple disciplines.

Author description

Caleb W. Lack, PhD is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Oklahoma, USA. He received his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Oklahoma State University, completing a pre-doctoral internship at the University of Florida in the process. Jacques Rousseau, MA is a lecturer in the School of Management Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He studied philosophy and English at UCT between 1992 and 1996, before beginning an academic career that has involved teaching multiple courses in critical thinking, business ethics, moral philosophy and sociology.