Organizing is a cornerstone of critical thinking. As humans, its our nature to think. However, we must be able to make sense of the continuous information that our brain receives. To understand the role of organizing in critical thinking we must look at a few areas, such as, origins of order, natural and mental orders, steps in organizing, and using orders.

The origins of order have been philosophized over hundreds of years by some influential thinkers. "Is order only in our minds? Is our mind born with its own patterns of organization? Can our mind create its own structures to fit its own needs"...Plato says we have innate ideas, Kant says space and time are structures of the mind...Chomsky says the mind has the natural ability to learn language and to produce and recognize meaning." ( Chp. 8, Kirby and Goodpaster, 1999) The definition of origins of order can...