Critical Thinking: Rationality, and the Vulcanization of Students.

Any fan of the old "Star Trek" television series knows there is something remarkably gripping about the character Spock. When he elevates an eyebrow on an otherwise expressionless face and matter of factly declares an argument "logical, flawlessly logical," we can't help but tingle with awe at his analytical expertise. We even exult (albeit somewhat uneasily) when Spock uses his laser-sharp logical skills in the dispassionate and indisputable demolition of his human companions' crude attempts at reasoning. Spock's coldbloodedness may exasperate us at times, but we generally admire and envy his ability to get to the heart of an argument by stripping through rhetorical gloss, emotional ephemera, and cognitive confusion. We might be amused and perhaps even occasionally sympathetic with McCoy's sputtering accusations that Spock is nothing more than an organic calculating machine, but we do not take them too seriously. More often than not, it is the ultra-logical Spock we admire, not the likeable but rather excitable Bones. Spock, as everyone knows, is a Vulcan (actually a half-Vulcan, but never mind), a member of a species characterized by its innate and total fidelity to logic. Vulcans are constitutionally incapable of thinking or behaving nonlogically. They never jump to conclusions, never act rashly, never let emotional smokescreens get in the way of sound inferential reasoning. They draw conclusions only when there is enough evidence to warrant them and refuse to go beyond the limits of logical probability. When Captain Kirk occasionally asks Spock to speculate