Thomas Piketty is a fine example of an evaluative thinker. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he not only provides detailed and sustained explanations of why he sees existing arguments relating to income and wealth distribution as flawed, but also gives us very detailed evaluations of the significance of a vast amount of data explaining why incomes is distributed in the ways it is.As Piketty stresses, “the distribution question… deserves to be studied in a systematic ...

Today we take it for granted that history is much more than the story of great men and the elites from which they spring. Other forms of history – the histories of gender, class, rebellion and nonconformity – add much-needed context and color to our understanding of the past. But this has not always been so. In CLR James’s The Black Jacobins, we have one of the earliest, and most defining, examples of how ‘history from below’ ought to be written.James's approach is based on his nee...

Thomas Robert Malthus’ 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population helped change the direction of economics, politics, and the natural sciences with its reasoning and problem solving.The central topic of the essay was the idea, extremely prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries, that human society was in some way perfectible. According to many thinkers of the time, mankind was on a course of steady improvement with advances set to continuously improve society and life for al...

Published in 1938, The Black Jacobins tells the story of the only successful slave revolution in historyan uprising inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution. The long struggle of African slaves in the French colony of San Domingo led to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804. ¶James explores the relationship between the two upheavals in an early example of ‘history from below,’ telling the story from the point of view of ordinary Haitians rather than (as was typical at t...

One of the most influential books on economics ever written, An Essay on the Principle of Population remains one of the most controversial, too. Arguing that unchecked population growth will eventually outstrip food availability and lead to famine and disease, this 1798 work inspired naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to develop the theory of natural selection. But it has also sparked criticism. To save society, Malthus proposes reining in population growth by minimizing ...

Friedman’s 1968 paper changed the course of economic theory, rejecting existing theory and outlined an effective alternate monetary policy designed to secure ‘high employment, stable prices and rapid growth.’ Friedman demonstrated that monetary policy plays a vital role in broader economic stability and argued that economists got their monetary policy wrong in the 1950s 60s by misunderstanding the relationship between inflation and unemployment. Previously, economists had believed that gov...

Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of all time – and his ideas had a huge impact on the economic policies of governments across the world.A key theorist of capitalism and its relationship to democratic freedoms, Friedman remains one of the most cited authorities in both academic economics and government economic policy. His work remains striking not just for its brilliant grasp of economic laws and realities, but also for its consistent application of high-l...

John P. Kotter’s Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail is a classic of business literature, and an example of high-level analysis and evaluation.In critical thinking, analysis is all about the sequence and features of arguments. When combined with evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of an argument, it provides the perfect basis for understanding corporate strategies and direction. Kotter applied these skills to his own experiences of coaching large and small busine...

Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 Road to Serfdom is a classic of conservative economic argument. While undeniably a product of a specific time in global politics – which saw the threat of fascism from Nazi Germany and its allies beguilingly answered by the promises of socialism – Hayek’s carefully constructed argument is a fine example of the importance of good reasoning in critical thinking.Reasoning is the art of constructing good, persuasive arguments by organizing one’s thoughts...

Amartya Sen uses his 1999 work Development as Freedom to evaluate the processes and outcomes of economic development.Having come to the conclusion that development is best summed up as the expansion of freedom, Sen examines traditional definitions and understandings of the term. He says people tend to think of freedoms as economic (the freedom to enter into market exchanges) or political (the freedom to vote and be an active citizen), and tries to understand why the defini...