Start each day by questioning a favorite hypothesis.
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)
Most people normally tend to seek confirmation of their own beliefs. As a result, thinking tends to slide along the same old paths. If you want to come up with new ideas, you have to break through the routines of thinking.
As a relaxation exercise, Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg recommended sacrificing a favorite hypothesis every morning. Instead of asking where others are wrong, ask yourself where you have made a wrong assumption. Looking for your own faulty thinking and false assumptions, however, is not an easy exercise. As the Bible says, you are more likely to see the thorn in someone else's side than the plank in your own eye. Recognizing your own blind spots is difficult, but it is worth the effort if you want to grow mentally.
The sciences are also full of implicit assumptions that are no longer questioned. For example, physicists are convinced that all fundamental forces can be described in terms of fields. This has been successful in describing electrical and magnetic phenomena, so it is obvious that this approach can be applied to the forces in the atomic nucleus or gravity. Although the concept of fields is only a theoretical idea, and fields cannot be directly observed, the power of habit has led us to believe that fields are as real as the mass or velocity of bodies, which can be directly measured.
In order to become aware of the power of habits of mind and to emancipate oneself from them, it is advisable from time to time to become aware of the implicit assumptions contained in one's own thinking or in the theories one uses. In doing so, you will discover a number of contradictions in your own thinking and in the theories you use.
However, you need to be aware that you are stepping outside of the usual communication when you abandon a commonly shared assumption. Therefore, you will need to communicate the changed assumptions very explicitly. It may also be difficult to convince others to take this step. Only if you can justify the change with a significant benefit will you be able to convince others to follow. Such a benefit can be either a practical application or a solution to a recognized scientific problem - ideally both.
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