Logical thinking

The value of hard work and logical thinking shouldn t be underestimated but pure luck also plays a role in most real scientific breakthroughs. What has been called "the supreme example [of luck] in all scientific history" occurred in the late summer of 1928 when the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming went on vacation, leaving in his lab a culture plate recently inoculated with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. 

Greek philosophers thought that everything could be learned by logical thinking. They did not believe in experimenting or observing. Therefore, they made many mistakes. Today scientists 1 know that neither fire, air, earth, nor water are really elements, but it was many years before the ideas of these early thinkers were questioned. 

In addition to proving the speculated cause scenario, the team should also make a conscientious effort to disprove the scenario that has been selected as the most likely cause scenario. Most investigation teams are competent at proving the selected scenario, but it is a recognized fact that we are not as capable at disproving a favored hypothesis (scenario). In the field of critical and logical thinking, there is a concept of falsifiability where a specific effort is made to disprove a speculated hypothesis, in addition to the efforts made to prove the hypothesis. 

Vocabulary and word fluency tests provide subjects with an initial letter for which they should name as many nouns as possible, or they are asked to name as many four-legged animals as possible within a given time limit. Other tasks tend rather to call for logical thinking, such as finding communalities, similarities and exceptions within a series of words. Several equivalent parallel forms of these tasks must be available if the same subject needs to be tested more than once or a few times on the same day. 

Zapponi, G.A., Marcello, I. (2006). Low-dose risk, hormesis, analogical and logical thinking. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1076 839-57. 

Such study provides an exercise in ethical and logical thinking. 

Another psychometric supplementary test that can be used is the retelling of a story. Here the patient s shortterm memory, perceptive faculties and logical thinking are tested. 

I Disorientation Absence of mind Disturbances of the sleeping-waking rhythm Exhaustability Logical thinking i Serial subtraction i Attention i Accentuated normal behaviour depressive irritable euphoric anxious talkative childish restless inability to keep one s distance Hyperrefiexia + Tremor (+), + Dysarthria (+), + Apraxia (+), + Stereotypes (+) Hypertonicity + + + + + (+) VEP + P 300 +... 

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