“Write! Writing, to knowledge, is a certified check.”
 |
| James Mangan |
Among its
highlights is a section titled 14 Ways to Acquire Knowledge – a blueprint to
intellectual growth, advocating for such previously discussed essentials as the
importance of taking example from those who succeed and organizing the
information we encounter, the power of curiosity, the osmosis between learning
and teaching, the importance of critical thinking (because, as Christopher
Hitchens pithily put it, “what can be asserted without evidence can be
dismissed without evidence”), the benefits of writing things down, why you
should let your opinions be fluid rather than rigid, the art of listening, the
art of observation, and the very core of what it means to be human.
You Can Do Anything by James Mangan
14 WAYS TO ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE
1.
PRACTICE
Consider the
knowledge you already have – the things you really know you can do. They are
the things you have done over and over; practiced them so often that they
became second nature. Every normal person knows how to walk and talk. But he
could never have acquired this knowledge without practice. For the young child
can’t do the things that are easy to older people without first doing them over
and over and over.
[…]
2.
ASK
Any normal
child, at about the age of three or four, reaches the asking period, the time
when that quickly developing brain is most eager for knowledge. “When?”
“Where?” “How?” “What?” and “Why?” begs the child – but all too often the reply
is “Keep still!” “Leave me alone!” “Don’t be a pest!”
Those first
bitter refusals to our honest questions of childhood all too often squelch our
“Asking faculty.” We grow up to be men and women, still eager for knowledge,
but afraid and ashamed to ask in order to get it.
[…]
Every person
possessing knowledge is more than willing to communicate what he knows to any
serious, sincere person who asks. The question never makes the asker seem
foolish or childish – rather, to ask is to command the respect of the other who
in the act of helping you is drawn closer to you, likes you better and will go
out of his way on any future occasion to share his knowledge with you.
Ask! When you
ask, you have to be humble. You have to admit you don’t know! But what’s so
terrible about that? Everybody knows that no man knows everything, and to ask
is merely to let the other know that you are honest about things pertaining to
knowledge.
3.
DESIRE
You never learn
much until you really want to learn. A million people have said: “Gee, I wish I
were musical!” “If I only could do that!” or “How I wish I had a good
education!” But they were only taking words – they didn’t mean it.
[…]
If you don’t
desire to learn you are either a num skull [sic] or a “know-it-all.” And the
world wants nothing to do with either type of individual.
4.
GET IT FROM YOURSELF
You may be
surprised to hear that you already know a great deal! It’s all inside you –
it’s all there – you couldn’t live as long as you have and not be full of
knowledge.
[…]
Most of your
knowledge, however – and this is the great difference between non-education and
education – is not in shape to be used, you haven’t it on the tip of your
tongue. It’s hidden, buried away down inside of you – and because you can’t see
it, you think it isn’t there.
Knowledge is
knowledge only when it takes a shape, when it can be put into words, or reduced
to a principle – and it’s now up to you to go to work on your own gold mine, to
refine the crude ore.
5.
WALK AROUND IT
Any time you
something new or very special, if the thing is resting in the ground, as your
examination and inspection proceeds, you find that you eventually walk around
it. You desire to know the thing better by looking at it from all angles.
[…]
To acquire
knowledge walk around the thing studied. The thing is not only what you touch,
what you see; it has many other sides, many other conditions, many other
relations which you cannot know until you study it from all angles.
The narrow mind
stays rooted in one spot; the board mind is free, inquiring, unprejudiced; it
seeks to learn “both sides of the story.”
Don’t screen off
from your own consciousness the bigger side of your work. Don’t be afraid
you’ll harm yourself if you have to change a preconceived opinion. Have a free,
board, open mind! Be fair to the thing studied as well as to yourself. When it
comes up for your examination, walk around it! The short trip will bring long
knowledge.
6.
EXPERIMENT
The world honors
the man who is eager to plant new seeds of study today so he may harvest a
fresh crop of knowledge tomorrow. The world is sick of the man who is always
harking back to the past and thinks everything worth knowing has already been
learned… Respect the past, take what it offers, but don’t live in it.
To learn,
experiment! Try something new. See what happens. Lindbergh experimented when he
flew the Atlantic. Pasteur experimented with bacteria and made cow’s milk safe
for the human race. Franklin experimented with a kite and introduced
electricity.
The greatest
experiment is nearly always a solo. The individual, seeking to learn, tries
something new but only tries fit on himself. If he fails, he has hurt only
himself. If he succeeds he has made a discovery many people can use. Experiment
only with your own time, your own money, your own labor. That’s the honest,
sincere type of experiment is to use other people’s bodies as if they were
guinea pigs.
7.
TEACH
If you would
have knowledge, knowledge sure and sound, teach. Teach your children, teach
your associates, teach your friends. In the very act of teaching, you will
learn far more than your best pupil.
[…]
Knowledge is
relative; you possess it in degrees. You know more about reading, writing, and
arithmetic than your young child. But teach that child at every opportunity;
try to pass on to him all you know, and the very attempt will produce a great
deal more knowledge inside your own brain.
8.
READ
From time
immemorial it has been commonly understood that the best way to acquire
knowledge was to read. That is not true. Reading is only one way to knowledge,
and in the winter’s opinion, not the best way. But you can surely learn from
reading if you read in the proper manner.
What you read is
important, but not all important. How you read is the main consideration. For
if you know how to read, there’s a world of education even in the newspapers,
the magazines, on a single billboard or a stray advertising dodger.
The secret of
good reading is this: read critically!
Somebody wrote
that stuff you are reading. It was a definite individual, working with a pen,
pencil or typewriter – the writing cam from his mind and his only. If you were
face to face with him and listening instead of reading, you would be a great
deal more critical than the average reader is. Listening, you would weigh his
personality, you would from some judgment about his truthfulness, his ability. But
reading, you drop all judgment, and swallow his words whole – just as if the
act of printing the thing made it true!
[…]
If you must read
in order to acquire knowledge, read critically. Believe nothing till it’s
understood, till it’s clearly proven.
9.
WRITE
To know it –
write it! If you’re writing to explain, you’re explaining it to yourself! If
you’re writing to inspire, you’re inspiring yourself! If you’re writing to
record, you’re recording it on your own memory. How often you have written
something down in order to be sure you would have a record of it, only to find
that you never needed the written record because you had learned it by heart!
[…]
The men of the
best memories are those who make notes, who write things down. They just don’t
write to remember, they write to learn. And because they DO learn by writing,
they seldom need to consult their notes, they have brilliant, amazing memories.
How different from the glib, slipshod individual who is too proud or too lazy
to write, who trusts everything to memory, forgets so easily, and possesses so
little real knowledge.
[…]
Write! Writing,
to knowledge, is a certified check. You know what you know once you have
written it down!
10. LISTEN
You have a pair
of ears — use them! When the other man talks, give him a chance. Pay attention.
If you listen you may hear something useful to you. If you listen you may
receive a warning that is worth following. If you listen, you may earn the
respect of those whose respect you prize.
Pay attention to
the person speaking. Contemplate the meaning of his words, the nature of his
thoughts. Grasp and retain the truth.
Of all the ways
to acquire knowledge, this way requires least effort on your part. You hardly
have to do any work. You are bound to pick up information. It’s easy, it’s
surefire.
11. OBSERVE
Keep your eyes
open. There are things happening, all around you, all the time. The scene of
events is interesting, illuminating, full of news and meaning. It’s a great
show — an impressive parade of things worth knowing. Admission is free — keep
your eyes open.
[…]
There are only
two kinds of experience: the experience of ourselves and the experience of
others. Our own experience is slow, labored, costly, and often hard to bear.
The experience of others is a ready-made set of directions on knowledge and
life. Their experience is free; we need suffer none of their hardships; we may
collect on all their good deeds. All we have to do is observe!
Observe!
Especially the good man, the valorous deed. Observe the winner that you
yourself may strive to follow that winning example and learn the scores of
different means and devices that make success possible.
Observe! Observe
the loser that you may escape his mistakes, avoid the pitfalls that dragged him
down.
Observe the
listless, indifferent, neutral people who do nothing, know nothing, are
nothing. Observe them and then differ from them.
12. PUT IN ORDER
Order is
Heaven’s first law. And the only good knowledge is orderly knowledge! You must
put your information and your thoughts in order before you can effectively
handle your own knowledge. Otherwise you will jump around in conversation like
a grasshopper, your arguments will be confused and distributed, your brain will
be in a dizzy whirl all the time.
13. DEFINE
A definition is
a statement about a thing which includes everything the thing is and excludes
everything it is not.
A definition of
a chair must include every chair, whether it be kitchen chair, a high chair, a
dentist’s chair, or the electric chair, It must exclude everything which isn’t
a chair, even those things which come close, such as a stool, a bench, a sofa.
[…]
I am sorry to
state that until you can so define chair or door (or a thousand other everyday
familiar objects) you don’t really know what these things are. You have the
ability to recognize them and describe them but you can’t tell what their
nature is. Your knowledge is not exact.
14. REASON
Animals have
knowledge. But only men can reason. The better you can reason the farther you
separate yourself from animals.
The process by
which you reason is known as logic. Logic teaches you how to derive a
previously unknown truth from the facts already at hand. Logic teaches you how
to be sure whether what you think is true is really true.
[…]
Logic is the
supreme avenue to intellectual truth. Don’t ever despair of possessing a
logical mind. You don’t have to study it for years, read books and digest a
mountain of data. All you have to remember is one word — compare.
Compare all
points in a proposition. Note the similarity — that tells you something new.
Note the difference — that tells you something new. Then take the new things
you’ve found and check them against established laws or principles.
This is logic.
This is reason. This is knowledge in its highest form.
__________________________________________________________________________
Who you are or what you are means nothing. Handicaps
mean even less. Most of our richest men started as poor boys. Many of our best
educated men spent very little time in high school, let alone college. Our
great inventors had no formal scientific training. The world’s greatest heroes
– look at Napoleon, Pasteur, Lindbergh – have always been surprises, dark
horses.
Dartnell
Corporation, Chicago-New York
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