Know the why

What everybody believes is not always what's actually true. Commonly held opinions are frequently just plain false. Often we are persuaded by authority and repetition rather than by evidence and reality. This tendency to accept what surrounds us makes it difficult to separate what we really know from what we just believe we know...

How can people, for thousands of years, believe false assertions that are easily disproved? Answer: Individuals tend to accept ideas if people they know and respect state or believe those ideas. You need to be very clear about the foundations of your opinions. If you believe something only because another person - even a professor - told you it was so, then you should not view your understanding as rock solid... Search for evidence and don't be satisfied until you know the why.

The authors of the above quote use Galileo as an example. For nearly 2000 years, everyone believed Aristotle's idea that objects fall at a rate proportional to their weight - heavier objects fall faster. But Galileo disproved this by testing it for himself. Whether he really dropped objects off the Leaning Tower of Pisa is up for debate, but he searched for evidence and disproved something people had taken as fact.

You could also use Martin Luther as an example too. He searched the scriptures to see if the things he was being taught were true. What he found in the Word of God was very different, and his search sparked the Reformation.

This lesson is still worth learning today. You can make your own application.

Source: The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking, Edward Burger and Michael Starbird, Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 36-38.