This blog will feature entries that combine my thoughts on various concepts of critical thinking with an emphasis on leadership. This will be done usually with a prompt of some sort followed by my interpretation and response. Hopefully, you'll be able to take away a nugget or two of wisdom from my posts.
The post for this week will be on intellectual perseverance as one of the traits for critical thinking and how it relates to leadership.
Happy reading!
What is 'intellectual perseverance?'
Intellectual perseverance is the stamina to persist in achieving deeper understanding despite the obstacles that may exist (The Critical Thinking Community, 2015). Other important intellectual traits include humility, courage, empathy, autonomy, and integrity as well as confidence in reason and fair-mindedness.
How does intellectual perseverance relate to your concept of a good leader?
Intellectual perseverance can be applied to the concept of a good leader because of the variety of issues that can arise and the choices a leader will have to decide on. A good leader will have to utilize critical thinking to make the best decision on behalf of an organization or group. This decision can run contrary to the status quo and by having intellectual perseverance can help to persuade others to do something better or logically sound based on concrete reason.
Intellectual perseverance aims at never being satisfied with an answer without critical scrutiny and healthy criticism. Truth is sought through rational principles withstanding irrational opposition and questioning over and over until the truth is gained through critical thought or deeper insight. This process can endure an extensive amount of time. Intellectual perseverance acknowledges this and continues to pursue the truth at these possible extensive durations.
Intellectual perseverance is an essential element in critical thinking and leadership because it is the drive to not fall into the fallacies such as group think, appealing to authority, or traditional wisdom (Dowden, 2003). Group think can be dangerous because it takes a group’s position blindly without critical thought. Appealing to authority can become fallacious when it is not a genuine authority figure as is portrayed as such. Traditional wisdom can be built on no rational basis just because it has been practiced as such without concrete reasoning.
These fallacies can sometimes be the status quo and can be difficult to overcome based on large support. Therefore, intellectual perseverance is necessary in order to aim for logical truth despite the possible oppositions that may arise from lack of critical thinking or rationale from individuals believing in a certain fallacy.
An example in history that depicts intellectual perseverance is proving that the Earth is indeed round and not flat (and there are still some non-believers, a.k.a. flat-Earthers, today! Google it! 😞). Anyways, Eratosthenes was one of the first to measure the circumferences of the Earth when it was accepted to be round and not flat in Greece around 500 B.C. As this hypothesis was expanding to other parts of the world, Aristotle provided some physical evidence for this argument that ran contrary to traditional wisdom that the Earth was flat (Chodos, 2017). This fact was refuted by decades from the general public and took decades of convincing before it became accepted though the logic and rationale of science. It took an extensive amount of intellectual perseverance to make this truth known and accepted.
Intellectual perseverance will be an important part in a person’s progression in learning. Studying a new subject or learning something different takes time to digest mentally to fully understand. Each one of us has a varying level of competency in any given subject matter that will need intellectual perseverance to strive through before being able to accept or understand it. Not everything a person learns will make sense immediately and sometimes can be disputed in search for a more truthful answer.
Hope you enjoyed my first post! Hope to see you here again next week. 😤
References
Chodos, A. (2017). Eratosthenes measures the Earth. American Physical Society. Retrieved from
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200606/history.cfm
Dowden, B. (2003). Fallacies. California State University. Retrieved from https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/
Nosich, G. M. (2012). Learning to think things through: Critical thinking across the curriculum. (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
The Critical Thinking Community. (2015). Valuable intellectual traits. Foundation for Critical Thinking. Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528
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