from euclid to stephen hawking | by: john farndon
i feel like my creativity has been low these past few days, so i decided to read the greatest scientists again ( it had collected sooooo much dust 🧹) to revive my soul and my understanding of the amazing things that are possible. let’s keep thinking & dreaming big.
from euclid, i learned to try to find a balance between always heavily relying on my intuition, assumptions, personal experiences, and observations - and start applying the scientific method to my ideas, projects, and things i’m very passionate about.
establish the basic truths. literally use first principles thinking to drill down to the fundamental truths, asking: what do i know to be true? how do i know this to be true? how does the truthiness of this thing affect other things / the world? how can i use the truthiness of this thing to my advantage or to solve a problem i care about.
cool proofs and theorems euclid came up with. essentially taking all that the greeks had learned in an applied mathematical manager and translating that into a reproducible, tested, and validated formula, and in doing so, turned it into pure mathematics. its cool that if you look at the way something is done in the world (some applied science) and break it down into its fundamental truths & essentially apply the scientific method to it → you can turn it into pure science that is replicable.
“only with completely watertight definitions of the basic concepts is it possible to establish firm proofs of otherwise vague hunches. and only with completely watertight definitions can we move confidently and logically forward through each step - any looseness in the definitions immediately invalidates the chain of logic.
i already had this realization about myself. i’m very much driven on inspiration, intuition, faith, and gut feelings. i think it is still extremely important for me to hone in on my instincts and intuition because this gives me that differentiating factor & clear guidance/creativity, but i need to find a way to pair this with the basic fundamental truths about whatever i am trying to learn about / accomplish.
“give him these coins since he must make a gain out of what he learns”
i think i should really start taking euclid’s approach to my projects. someone asked euclid what he would get out of studying geometry and euclid called a servant, gave him some money, and said “give him these coins since he must make a gain out of what he learns”