Monday Morning Quote
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Monday Morning Quotes
Monday Morning Quotes
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Since 1998 I've been sending out these reflections first thing each week--one or more quotes plus my thoughts about the intersections and contradictions. They're archived here back to 2002, and a new one is posted every Monday morning. Dialogue is still welcome . . .
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Quote #964 - #FactuallySpeaking
25 Jan, 2021
FACTUALLY SPEAKING
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
Thomas Huxley
"I believe that if you don't change your views as you learn new facts, then many of the facts you believe probably aren't facts."
George T. Conway III
"In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or expected dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become."
Mary Roach
SPOOK
"Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."
Jules Verne
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
Wait, wait, wait, are you saying to take statements--
teachings--
even discoveries unquestioned?
No, of course not.
Huxley is talking about what the rest are talking about--
new facts have to be factored into your understanding
or you're not understanding at all.
The problem is that people like things that are finite
clear-cut
unchanging.
And truth isn't like that.
Facts reveal themselves
and truth evolves
and our understanding needs to evolve
or it's a lack of understanding.
So if knowledge evolves,
who gets to decide which knowledge stands?
The next piece of knowledge.
The next perspective.
The next understanding.
If they can't be factored in, then it's not knowledge.
There is still a deep chasm between fact and fancy.
I'm not a big fan of George Conway
yet what he says is so true--
if your understanding doesn't involve with new information,
then it's not knowledge, it's a a belief system--
and if you have to believe it, it's not a fact.
And, my love, emotionally speaking,
if your emotional reactions don't change
as you learn new facts--
new truths about yourself and others--
then they're probably not appropriate emotional reactions,
but your own personal mythology
that has little to do with anyone else at all.
All of this is relevant--
micro and macro--
for all that we will continue to deal with
from the residue of
the beautiful terrible year that was
2020.
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