The power of direct observation

People are obsessed with summaries. They want the short version of books, reports and better essays.

The wisest thinkers bypass the middlemen.

They go straight to the source.

Leonardo da Vinci visited dissection rooms to learn anatomy. He wanted to see how muscles are attached to the bone. He wrote, “Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”

Don’t miss valuable details.

Make peace with the long source.

Get your hands dirty.

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets,” Leonardo said.

Francis Bacon, the father of the scientific method (empiricism), argued fiercely against the habit of just reading old summaries of Aristotle.

He believed that if you want to know how nature works, you build an experiment and observe it yourself.

Summaries sometimes give you the illusion of knowledge without the pleasure of having struggled through the idea yourself.

Experience the knowledge yourself.

Talk to people.

Try things out.

Trust what you see or experience over what you are “supposed” to see.