Thinking critically can feel like a difficult nut to crack. This is especially the case as its something you'll likely not realise you have encountered prior to your time at university. With that in mind it can be valuable to think about the sort of mindset we should be in to tackle our work critically.

Strangely enough, a good place to start on our journey to develop critical thinking skills is by a fireplace in 17^th century France. More specifically, the fireplace of the French philosopher René Descartes. Descartes was a philosopher who sought to understand the very nature of knowledge itself. Descartes can be seen as an exemplary critical thinker. From the chair by his fireplace, he asked himself the following question: is there anything I can really know for certain?

To answer this question Descartes developed an approach so radical that he questioned everything. He sought to establish if he could trust his senses, could tell the difference between what was real and what was a dream; he even went as far as to ask whether he himself was real!

A statue of a man thinking

Without dwelling on the intricacies of Descartes’ argument, we can use his philosophy to suggest that as students we shouldn’t take anything for certain. Descartes’ approach - often referred to as ‘radical doubt’- allowed him to question the validity of what he understood. In essence, it meant a method of doubt that didn’t take anything for granted. Nothing was off limits.

So, on a smaller-scale, the same applies to your reading at university. Critical thinking at university involves channelling a little bit of Descartes’ spirit. His philosophy can inspire us to ask tricky and ambitious questions about what we read. Where Descartes had his fireplace to think about the world, you might have the bus home from university to ask yourself whether that lecturer’s argument was convincing, or time on a run to check whether you found a journal article you read that morning persuasive. Good reading and thinking is all about asking yourself if you can trust what appears on the page. If you have a little bit of Descartes’ radical doubt in your mind whilst you read you’ll be well on the road to thinking critically. Everything is up for grabs! As ever with academic reading and writing, it is about having the belief in yourself to give it a go!

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