A Quote by C. West Churchman
It's always wise to raise questions about the most obvious and simple assumptions.
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Whenever you see a sweeping statement that a tremendous amount can come from a very small number of assumptions, you always find that it is false. There are usually a large number of implied assumptions that are far from obvious if you think about them sufficiently carefully.
If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.
The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies.
Kids always ask the most obvious and the most difficult questions.
Science will always raise philosophical questions like, is any scientific theory or model correct? How do we know? Are unobserved things real? etc. and it seems to me of great importance that these questions are not just left to scientists, but that there are thinkers who make it their business to think as clearly and slowly about these questions as it is possible to. Great scientists do not always make the best philosophers.
As a man, having a conversation about feminism can be tricky - the best I can do is to have assumptions and ask questions. You always run the risk of putting your foot in it.
... For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to accumulate - up about 4 percent in the last 10 years - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That should raise obvious questions about CO2 being the cause of climate change.
There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.
We have a tendency to make assumptions about everything! The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking-we take it personally-then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison in our word. That is why whenever we make assumptions, we're asking for problems. We make assumptions, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.
Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
So many reporters ask a lot of crazy questions. The answers to most of these questions are so obvious, but they ask them anyway just to see what kind of reaction they can get out of you.
The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.
I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.
There is something particularly appealing about teaching a subject that seems to deal with the lowest kind of relationships-accidents, ambulance chasing-because you can show students that these raise the most fundamental questions about the structure of society.
One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you personal questions.
The obvious choice isn't always the best choice, but sometimes, by golly, it is. I don't stop looking as soon I find an obvious answer, but if I go on looking, and the obvious-seeming answer still seems obvious, I don't feel guilty about keeping it.
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