This chapter looks at claims to understanding. It begins by looking at the system I have worked on, the lamprey spinal cord locomotor circuit, and claims that circuit function and behaviour can be understood in terms of the interactions of spinal cord nerve cells. I highlight that the claims to experimental confirmation actually reflect various assumptions and extrapolations and that the claimed understanding is lacking. I then look at the Nobel Prize winning work on the Aplysia gill withdrawal reflex, making the same conclusion as the lamprey, various assumptions and extrapolations are used to claim causal links, and in doing this commit various logical fallacies, including confusing correlation for causation and begging the question. I finish by looking at hippocampal long-term potentiation and claims it is the cellular basis of memory, again highlighting that the claimed links have not been made.

This chapter considers induction, deduction and abduction as methods of obtaining scientific knowledge. The introductory section again ends by highlighting that there is no single method, and refers to claims that scientific reasoning uses various heuristics or rules of thumb based on the specific approach and the background information we have, and that we should recognise that this can introduce various errors of reasoning: by being aware of the potential for making these errors, we are better able to guard against making them. The bulk of the chapter then looks at specific logical fallacies, using neuroscience examples to illustrate them. These include ad hoc reasoning; begging the question; confusing correlation for causation; confirmation and disconfirmation biases; false dichotomies; false metaphors; the appeal to authority, tradition and emotion; the mereological fallacy; the naturalistic fallacy; and straw man arguments.

The 22-item Critical Processing of Beauty Images Scale (CPBI scale; Engeln-Maddox & Miller, 2008) assesses women’s tendency to engage in critical processing of media images of idealized female beauty. The CPBI scale can be administered online or in-person with adolescent and adult women and is free to use in any setting. This chapter first discusses the development of the CPBI scale as well as the potential for counterarguing and critical processing of beauty images to intervene between exposure to media imagery and body image outcomes. Next, this chapter provides evidence of the psychometric properties of the CPBI scale. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses conducted with samples of young adult, undergraduate women suggest a correlated three-factor structure for scores on the scale. The first factor comprises items noting the “fakeness” of beauty images, the second comprises items that accuse such images of being harmful to women, and the third comprises criticisms that models are too thin. Internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity support the use of the CPBI scale. This chapter provides the CPBI scale items, instructions for administering the measure to participants, the item response scale, and the scoring procedure. Logistics of use, such as permissions, copyright, and citation information, are also provided for readers.

Managers and leaders need to critically analyse their own thinking and decision-making processes so they can objectively evaluate the problems and issues they face every day. To do this they need to understand their personal preferences, prejudices, values and cultural beliefs, and their motivations and desires. It is also important for them to understand how these factors shape the biases managers and leaders take to decision-making. To achieve success, they require the ability to analyse, synthesise and evaluate material, and to assemble their thoughts in a logical argument.

This chapter argues that much of the complexity and rigour of Geography revolves around the sophisticated conceptualisation that is involved in thinking geographically, something that begins to develop in preschool. It is not so much what the geographer studies but the way they look at the human or physical phenomena they are exploring that makes the study of Geography what it is. This leads some to say that everything can be studied geographically or everything is geography! Going back to the discussion on the ‘grammar’ of a subject, we can again highlight that what many people perceive as geography is purely the vocabulary of the subject and what makes geography is the grammar of the subject; that is, it is the implicit conceptual thinking involved when exploring and trying to make sense of the world in which we live.

The richness and importance of the HASS learning area pivots on the exploration and understanding of how we are human, our interactions with others and our journey as humans in the world. We are the authors and actors in the story of our past, present and future, captured in the published and unpublished texts that inform our learning in HASS. Writings, drawings, maps, data, images, reports, laws, journals, plays, poetry and ephemera are available as physical and online items because they have been collected, organised, preserved, curated and shared by libraries and librarians, and their colleagues in associated institutions in physical and digital spaces.

The Introduction explores the historical progression of human civilization, emphasizing the pivotal role of tools, science, and technology. It traces the evolution from primitive tools to advanced technologies, highlighting the impact on various aspects of human life such as food production, transportation, communication, and societal organization. The text also parallels past innovations like the wheel and the printing press and contemporary advancements in lab-grown meat, controlled fusion, gene-editing, and AI. The narrative underscores the profound choices and debates surrounding technological development, acknowledging the responsibility of individuals and society to navigate the ever evolving technological landscape with wisdom and foresight. The Introduction invites readers to reflect on the trajectory of science and technology, posing critical questions about the direction of future advancements and the ethical considerations associated with them. It emphasizes the importance of actively engaging with the material, thinking critically, and making informed decisions in the face of technological progress.

This chapter presents an overview of social interaction, technology, and language learning within the context of a cross-cultural exchange project. Interaction with others and being an active participant in an environment where the language is used is crucial to language learning. We will first look at social interaction and situate it in the context of language teaching and learning. Next, we present some primary themes of social interaction and discuss the practices that inform the role social interaction plays in collaborative projects in language classes. We provide examples of how technological tools were used to facilitate virtual social interaction between language students in France and the United States. Finally, the chapter concludes by offering insights for cross-cultural projects that prioritize social interaction.

So, here we are at the final chapter, and at this point you might be minded to ask ‘So what?’ Although some of you may have found this book to be so compelling that you have decided to become an epidemiologist, it is likely that most of you will looking for other ways for this epidemiology stuff to value add to your health science learning and ongoing professional or academic lives. In modern life, we are deluged with health information that is provided in multiple formats, including social media, news websites, online videos, televised news bulletins and chat shows, and even academic texts and other published literature. How are we to find something approaching the truth in this plethora of often contradictory information? In its focus on epidemiology, this book has aimed to provide you with the tools for evaluating scientific information using critical thinking – a way of identifying and evaluating evidence that has wide applicability to just about every area of human endeavour.

Epidemiology is the study of patterns and determinants of disease and other health states in populations. It primarily uses quantitative methods (those methods dealing with counting, measuring and comparing things) that definitely use statistics and include statistical methods, but in this book we will not be talking about performing any statistical acrobatics more complicated than completing a sudoku puzzle.

This chapter serves as a guide for heuristic inquiry into the social and emotional intelligences. The intent is for readers to come to know their relationships and emotions in ways that appreciate them as phenomena, where there is always something to be discovered. Heuristic inquiry offers a discovery process for application to a concerning or meaningful issue or challenge, which are associated with emotional experience. This allows readers to develop their own social and emotional intelligences to increase the quality of their lives and the effectiveness of their personal and professional endeavors.

This chapter reprises the arguments advanced in the first four chapters of the book, and assesses the question of what “lessons” history can teach on that basis. It argues that the habits and methods of analysis, interpretation, open-ended inquiry, and intellectual flexibility that study in History cultivates are uniquely valuable in the specific circumstances of our own time, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It argues that it is these habits, rather than any specific political values, that make History uniquely valuable as a form of education for citizenship. It argues, finally, that this is the only approach to the civic value of history education that is compatible with the ethical principles foundational to the discipline of History. In closing, it presents the case for viewing the understanding that history offers us no lessons as the most important lesson history can teach us. This is a lesson that can teach us to think and act with due deliberation, to inquire more deeply before acting, and to act in full confidence that our actions will have unintended consequences.

This chapter reviews the literature on the teaching of history, and defines the purpose of this book: to offer a clearer definition of the aims and benefits of the study of History at the college and university level. Two principles are at the heart of that conception. One is that long-standing methodological and epistemological divisions within the discipline are a source of its unique pedagogical value. The other is that History assumes a particular ethical posture relative to its subjects – the people it studies – and that this too is a source of its unique pedagogical value.

Communication is an important professional and life skill. Organisations today are looking for people with the communication skills to contribute productively in the workplace and maintain effective relationships with their stakeholders. While we may all communicate, not all our communication is intended, and not all of it is interpreted and understood as we expect. Communication can break down at any number of points.

Your ability to develop messages that are received as they are intended depends on your emotional intelligence (being able to interpret which aspects of communication are required), your emotional competence (being able to manage emotions of yourself and others) and your technical skills (being able to produce messages that are capable of being understood).

It’s important that we learn how to harness the benefits of all the tools available to make us better communicators rather than let them replace us in our communication-focused roles. The purpose of this book is to help prepare you with the skills to improve or enhance your communication and effectively utilise the communication tools and channels at your fingertips.

The chapter answers the question ‘Why has the rule of law become so fragile?’ as set up by the 2023 Nine Dots Prize competition. It shows how the liberal narrative of the rule of law is built on repressing the political elements of the legal system. Using Jungian psychoanalysis to analyse the crises of the rule of law, the author shows that the more we repress democratic politics from the legal system, the more the politics will strike back as ‘shadow’ in a distorted, anti-democratic form. The chapter also deepens the analysis of how DWE works politically with anger, preventing it from turning into ‘free-floating rage’ that can be exploited by authoritarian populism. It introduces the notion of ‘critical feeling’ to complement ‘critical thinking’ in contemporary academia.

The question of legitimation, according to the analysis of the Frankfurt scholars, contains an unanswered aspect pertaining to the entire normative approach. This is about the final arbiter to decide whether a regulatory system can claim legitimacy. It can be logically suggested that such a final arbiter needs to be positioned outside of the normative system in question. Once we can agree that the natality aspect of fundamental rights is lost in the transfer from the non-digital domain, we see that the Frankfurt school’s aspiration towards the general explanatory power is lost as well. The relational chain stops after the creation of the digital narrative; that is, normativity does not follow as a logical result from internal development inside the digital domain. Despite the relational chain being broken, normativity exists in and for the digital domain. If not a result of the development as proposed by the Frankfurt school, there have to be other explanatory venues. The main among these is the concept of self-normativity.