One such area of common ground is the utilization of creative and critical thinking skills by
practitioners within both the arts/humanities and the sciences. Although creative thinking has
traditionally been associated with the former and critical thinking with the latter, even a brief
examination of the evidence suggests the essential nature of both creative and critical thinking
within each of the two cultures. In this paper, I would like to begin with a sampling of modern
definitions for both critical and creative thinking, then discuss a few selected examples
illustrating how these modes of thought can play complementary roles in traditions of both
scientific and humanistic thought.