The importance of thinking is self-evident in the study of learning, talent and creativity.
This reminds me of the story of Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), the master of German chemistry. One night, he went to the laboratory to see that the students were still doing experiments, and asked: “What do you do during the day?” The students replied, “Also doing experiments.” He asked again: “Then when do you think?” The student was speechless. He thought that chemistry is an experimental subject, and new substances and new phenomena can be discovered by doing experiments. In this regard, Li Bixi inspired students to say that chemistry is both an experimental subject and a theoretical subject. He can only do experiments without thinking, and cannot discover the truth.
In the 1870s when Liebig lived, he had not established the Nobel Prize, and naturally he also failed to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. However, among the first 60 Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, 42 were his students. He was simply the “work machine” for Nobel Prize winners. These winners benefited from his educational thoughts and insisted on combining learning and thinking. In fact, this is consistent with Confucius’ combination of learning and thinking more than 2500 years ago in China. He once said: “Learning without thinking is useless, thinking without learning is perilous.”
What is thinking? Thinking is a person’s thinking exploration activity, and thinking ability is a positive and creative force generated in people’s thinking activity. Thinking is a unique ability of human beings. It originates from the processing of information by the main body of thinking (people). Any thinking is based on the observation of objective things. After association, reflection and induction, new thought products are obtained, that is, to obtain Invent and create new ideas. Most creative and outstanding inventors do not have advanced degrees or even college diplomas, but they all have super thinking ability. For example, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sloan Musk, etc., are all the most outstanding inventors and great figures who have changed or will continue to change the world. Therefore, to measure the quality of learning is not the level of scores and degrees, but whether you have the ability to think, as the famous American philosopher John Dewey said: “Learning is to learn to think.”
The ancients said: If less becomes natural, habit becomes natural. Habit is a tenacious and huge force, it can dominate life, good habits can help you on the road to success, and bad habits can ruin a person’s future. In essence, education is to cultivate good habits of learners, such as the habit of reading, the habit of questioning, the habit of thinking, the habit of using both brains and hands. The development of good habits is perseverance, and perseverance will pay off.
My enlightenment education was carried out in a private school. Confucius’s “The Analects” is one of the enlightenment readers. Benefiting from his educational thought combining learning and thinking, I developed the habit of thinking earlier. In my sixtieth year, I gradually formed a creed that I must think every day and think something new. It is no exaggeration to say that, except for falling asleep, I spend the rest of the day thinking, processing the information I hear and see through thinking to gain true knowledge. In addition, I still have a fixed and systematic thinking time every day. Every morning from 4:30 to 5:30, I will lie quietly in bed, reflect on the gains and losses of daily work, and think about some difficult problems that are usually unsolved. I really tasted the sweetness of learning to think. So far, I have published 30 books on education and more than 500 articles. Most of the creative titles and core ideas of the articles were formed during this “golden thinking” time.
Today, one of the drawbacks of Chinese universities is the lack of training for students to think, which prevents outstanding talents from appearing, let alone masters. In this regard, we can no longer ignore it. We should reform the outdated curriculum system and strengthen the philosophy-based thinking method curriculum. Teachers should pay attention to the guidance of students’ thinking method training, especially to improve their ability to engage in invention and creation through scientific research. This is the only way to create outstanding talents!
