Can thinking and learning be the same thing?

This is quite a deep philosophical question! The answer may well be subjective but I would suggest that they can be.

In philosophy there are two types of knowledge known as "a priori" & "a posteriori".

A priori knowledge is independent of experience. That is to say that it can be determined by pure reason (i.e. thinking) alone. An example might be: If I told you that A was bigger than B and that B was bigger than C, you could reason that A was therefore bigger than C.

A posteriori knowledge can not be known purely by rational thought. It requires experience/empirical evidence to test its truth. For example: If I told you that I was taller than you, we could not determine the truth of this statement purely by thought alone; we would need to measure our heights.

The above examples may not be the best that could be given but hopefully they show the difference. It should be up to you to determine if you agree completely with this. If you do then the answer to your question is that we can learn a priori knowledge purely by thinking.