Thinking is a mental activity that distinguishes man and is the reason for his progress and development

Thinking is a mental activity that distinguishes man and is the reason for his progress and development

Thinking is a mental activity and a human need. It is based on a set of processes such as memorization, memory, analysis and innovation. It is a reason for human progress and development.

• Without thinking, man will remain in a state of barbarism and primitiveness.
• The thought process is a mechanism that allows an individual to express, form, analyze, and communicate a cause-and-effect relationship and propose meaningful solutions to problems.
• Thinking is an affirmation of the existence of knowledge.
• It enables the individual to create knowledge, build ideas, and build connections between them.
• It entails inference and inquiry along with processing and evaluation of information. It also enables exploration of perceptions and possibilities.
• Thus, thinking belongs to the highest levels of cognitive organization, which is the level of awareness of relationships.

The most important vocabulary that forms the meaning of thinking

• imagination
• response
• intelligence
• inference
• abstraction
• memory

thinking skills

• memory
• comprehension
• application
• analysis
• Evaluation
• innovation

Remembering and recalling:  It is the retrieval or repetition of information or ideas from memory, and this is the first and most important thinking skill  that a person develops from early childhood.

Comprehension and Interpretation:   Constructing meaning or inferring or explaining material from written, spoken or graphic sources. Reading is the most common comprehension skill, and these skills are developed starting in early education.

Application:  It is the use of materials learned or that have been learned or applied in new situations, and a person can begin to use that skill well when he reaches the preparatory stage almost

Analysis:  It is the process of dividing materials or concepts into major elements and determining how the parts relate to each other or to the general purpose. This skill includes examining, contrasting, distinguishing, separating, classifying, experimenting, and deducing.

 Evaluation:  Evaluating, making judgments, and drawing conclusions from ideas, information, or data collected by a person, and evaluating the value and usefulness of this information. This skill includes most of what is commonly referred to as critical thinking, and a person usually uses these skills commonly when he reaches the university level.

Innovation:  It is putting parts together or reorganizing them in a new way, shape, or product. This process is the most difficult mental job, and it is what makes a person distinguished among his peers because he is characterized by creative thinking.

Obstacles to thinking mental activity

• internal obstacles
• external obstacles

internal thinking obstacles

• Preservation: 

As if the individual is satisfied with memorizing and storing information in memory, and does not search for and develop that information.

Or to be inspired by his knowledge only from cultural legacies, and this impedes correct thinking.

To echo the prevailing opinions, which can be true or false.

• Reliance on the senses only:

The individual can use his senses without other tools of thinking, which may be deceptive in some cases.

• Emotion

When a person responds to his emotions only being unable to think.

He may only respond to his biological needs

external thinking barriers

Such as keeping pace with others, as if the individual follows in his thinking following others when dealing with a specific issue, without leaving himself room for thinking.

Or a strong adherence to customs and traditions without developing himself with the era in which he lives.

thinking levels

Thinking levels can be divided in terms of the complexity of human mental operations into:

• Simple thinking
• complex thinking

Simple thinking:  It is the mental or mental activities that are not complex and that require minimal thinking practices such as memorization or understanding and application, and these skills must be mastered by a person before moving on to complex thinking skills.

Complex thinking:  It is the planned and thoughtful thinking and research in which a person proceeds with a high level of mental operations, in order to be able to reach the goal. In this type of thinking, a person calls on his previous experiences, which contributed to solving similar problems and difficulties that he faced in the past.

When the difficulty that a person is exposed to is new, he recalls the thinking strategy that he adopted in the past to solve such difficulties.

This level of thinking includes a group of mental operations that are more complex than the previous stage, such as the skill of problem-solving, decision-making, and critical, logical and scientific thinking.

Cultural diversity is one of the enhancers of thinking

• Thinking is a social process associated with the human social environment.
• For the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is associated with the Islamic heritage and the ancient Arab historical traditions that are rooted in human history.
• Saudi society has evolved a lot over the years, and its values, customs and traditions have adapted to modern life, and the Saudi people enjoy a cultural richness and unique cultural diversity because they are at the center of ancient and important trade routes.
• Since ancient times, Arab merchants formed a trade network from Asia to the Mediterranean Sea, and Arab merchants formed a link between those regions.
• The concept of cultural diversity carries the idea of ​​coexistence between more than one cultural aspect within a single society, and it implies human values ​​that provide a kind of road map for the social, cultural and institutional organization of contemporary societies.
• Culture takes various forms across space and time and this diversity is evident in the authenticity of the distinct identities of the communities that make up humanity.
• Cultural diversity as a source of creativity is as necessary for the human race as biological diversity is for living organisms.