I have two kids, and the older of them are asking lots of questions. I love when he asks. It is an opportunity to engage his mind.
After hundreds of questions, I think I found the best answer to all of them. It is…
What do you think?
— Dad, why is the sun shining?
— Hm, what do you think?
— How do we see other people on cell phones?
— Let’s see, what do you think?
— How did humans discover that Earth is round?
— I don’t know, what do you think?
These conversations lead both of us on an extraordinary intellectual journey. Deduction and reasoning are tools everyone should possess.
By guiding my son through these well-discovered areas of knowledge, I hope to instill in him the idea that he can figure it out. He can reason, connect the dots, look things up and arrive at a conclusion. A conclusion or hypothesis that he can test. And it is my sincerest hope that one day, he or one of our descendants will answer questions no one ever answered before.
It was the below conversation that prompted me to think about this.
We were walking to the grocery shop and discussing humanity’s significant discoveries.
— You know, humans didn’t always know that the Earth is a sphere… we thought it was flat…
— Really? How did we find out it isn’t?
— Hm, what do you think? How would you go about it?
— Uhm, if it is flat, it has an end. I would try to find the end of it.
— Yes, that’s exactly what we did. Did we succeed?
— No.
— What do you think we found?
— That, it’s a sphere.
— Okay, but how? What happens when you go in one direction only on Earth?
— You end up where to start.
— Exactly, that was smart. You didn’t know all this, but you figured it out. This is how we humans discover great things.
— What happens after discoveries?
— We draw maps and build on them to fuel even more discoveries. We know a lot about Earth now; what do you think we are exploring next?
— Space!
Indeed, there is much for us to discover and understand.
Leave a Reply