CTCR

Legg
8-31-21
Quote of the day mini essay #2

“Sit Down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow
humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” - Thomas
Henry Huxley

Over the course of our academic lives, we are conditioned to try and infer, guess ahead of our
abilities. Use what we have learned and apply it despite how shallow our knowledge might be.
The idea of “sitting down…as a child” is asking that we make ourselves a blank slate, to stop
trying to connect whatever mismatched knowledge or notions we have to the new knowledge at
hand. As a teenager, I’m smarter than I’ve ever been in my life by an exponentially large
amount. Relative to my former self, I am a god. This used to impair me because I thought I knew
more than I did, I saw myself as a sage and not a child. By definition, you cannot learn
something without it being a new piece of knowledge. That was my mistake, I didn’t know what I
didn’t know and failed to recognize new knowledge when it was in front of me. This applies to
experiential knowledge and facts alike. My goal now is to treat ever piece of “common” or
“basic” knowledge with more thought and look at it with an open mind. I will still reject many new
ideas I come across, but one must always be cognizant of overlooking truth because of the old
knowledge that ruminates in ones head. You will learn nothing if all you ever keep is your old,
familiar knowledge and outlooks which often blind or taint your view to something totally new.