The never-ending quest for better answers

In January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart seventy-three seconds after launch. Seven astronauts died. The nation was stunned. A presidential commission was formed to find the cause. Among the members sat Richard Feynman, a physicist famous for refusing to accept the comfortable explanations. While engineers and managers talked of complex systems and institutional pressures, Feynman kept returning to small details, the rubber O-rings that sealed the solid rocket boosters. He had heard that the rings might stiffen in cold weather. The night before the launch, Florida temperatures dropped near freezing, far colder than on any previous shuttle flight. Officials insisted the design was safe. Feynman was not convinced. During a public hearing, he asked for a sample of the O-ring material, a glass of ice water, and a simple clamp; he submerged it for a few moments, then released it. The material didn't spring back. It remained deformed, unable to seal. The demonstration lasted less than a minute. It required no advanced mathematics and no classified documents, only the willingness to test the assumption against reality. The commission's final report confirmed what Feynman's experiment had made obvious: the O-rings had failed in the cold, allowing hot gas to escape and destroy the vehicle. Feynman's act was not dramatic genius. It was critical thinking in its purest form: notice the anomaly, refuse to accept the official story without evidence, design the direct test, and let the result speak. In a room full of experts, the simplest question: Does this still work when it's cold? proved decisive.

Critical thinking is one of the key aspects of solving the interesting and important problems of life. The best solutions to problems are usually simple. They are far simpler than one can imagine. People generally ignore them because of their simplicity. Ego wants complexity. The sign of intelligence is to do tedious tasks in a simple manner. Let's explore how our thinking evolves from experiencing the world to systematically understanding it.

Imagine an early human standing in a forest. He sees animals, observes the changing seasons, notices that certain stones are sharper than others, and discovers that some plants provide food while others cause illness. At first, they are isolated experiences. But gradually he begins to recognize patterns, communicate discoveries, and use existing knowledge to solve new problems. This transition from experience to organized knowledge is one of the most important developments in human history. Human progress didn't depend only on physical tools such as stones, spears, and fire. It also depended on intellectual tools: ways of thinking, communicating, remembering, reasoning, and coordinating with other people.

We live in an age of extraordinary achievements. We can travel across continents in hours, communicate instantaneously, treat diseases that once killed millions, and study the universe using scientific instruments. Just because these achievements surround us, it is easy to assume that progress is a natural consequence of time passing. But time alone doesn't guarantee progress. For thousands of years, many societies experienced relatively little improvement in living conditions. People were born into societies whose technologies, customs, and beliefs remained largely unchanged throughout their lifetime. It's worthwhile to think about what made people keep inventing, correcting their mistakes, and building on previous discoveries.

Suppose there are two societies, Society A and Society B. Society A has a respected teacher whose ideas nobody is allowed to question. His knowledge may be considerable, but when he makes a mistake, that mistake can survive for generations. Society B allows students to challenge their teacher, propose alternatives, and test competing explanations. Even if the teacher is brilliant, his ideas are not treated as the final word. Society B has an important advantage. Its knowledge can improve even when its current authorities are wrong. This sustained progress requires more than intelligent individuals. It requires a culture in which ideas can be questioned and improved.

Thales of Miletus is presented as an early pioneer of a way of thinking that helped lay the foundations for philosophy and science. Before exploring Thales, it's important to understand two important terms: Ontology and Epistemology. Ontology is the study of what exists and what the world is like. Epistemology is the study of knowledge - how we acquire it, justify it, and improve it. For example, discovering that Earth orbits the Sun is an advancement in our knowledge of the world. Developing a method by which people can question, test, and improve such discoveries is an advancement in our understanding of how knowledge grows.

In Thales'time, many explanations of natural events were connected to mythology and the actions of God. If an earthquake occurred, people might attribute it to the anger of Poseidon, the Greek God associated with the sea. The deeper problem was not merely that the explanation invoked a God. It was that accepted explanations could be treated as unquestionable. When an explanation is protected from criticism, there is little opportunity to improve it. Thales helped establish a different intellectual tradition. He founded the Milesian school, associated with inquiry into the natural world. The tradition encouraged pupils to develop and criticize explanations, including those proposed by teachers. His student Anaximander rejected some of his ideas. For example, A teacher says, "The Earth moves because a God makes it move." A student asks, "What mechanisms cause that movement?" The teacher answers. The student then asks what explains that mechanism. Instead of ending the inquiry with an appeal to authority, the discussion opens new questions. That is the beginning of an ongoing process of intellectual improvement.

Thales proposed that Earth rested on water and Earthquakes resulted from its movement on that underlying water. His explanation was incorrect. Modern geology explains earthquakes through processes involving faults and the movement of tectonic plates. An incorrect explanation can still represent progress if it replaces an untestable story with a more promising attempt to explain how nature works. Thales's proposal was not the final answer. Its historical significance lies in the direction of inquiry. Natural events should be explained through the natural world.

Suppose you are investigating why a plant is dying. One explanation is that an invisible supernatural force has decided that the plant must die. Another explanation is that roots may be receiving too little oxygen, the soil may contain excessive salt, or the plant may be infected. The latter explanation may be wrong. But it offers specific possibilities that can be investigated and corrected. You can inspect the roots, test the soil, change the watering conditions, and observe the result. A useful explanation doesn't have to be corrected from the beginning. It must give us something useful to investigate.

This is the difference between producing a single discovery and establishing a process that can generate discoveries indefinitely. For example, a person discovers a useful mathematical theorem. The theorem solves a particular class of problems. A community learns to propose ideas, identify errors, criticize explanations, and develop better ones. This process can generate many discoveries across many different fields. It reminds me of Adam Grant, who said, "Set a goal if you want to succeed once. Develop a system if you want to succeed over and over." The importance of Thales lies less in any one answer than in helping establish an intellectual tradition capable of producing further answers.

Criticism is not a negativity. Good criticism is a creative activity. It helps us discover what is wrong with an idea so that we can develop something better. Criticism is a method where no explanation should be accepted merely because an authority, tradition, or influential person endorses it. An idea must remain open to examination and improvement. For example, a doctor has treated a disease using the same method for twenty years. A younger researcher discovers evidence that a different treatment works better. In a dogmatic culture, the younger researcher must be dismissed for challenging established practices. In a critical culture, the new treatment can be examined, compared with existing methods, and adopted if the evidence supports it. The objective is not to replace the old ideas with new ones simply because they are new. It is to improve our knowledge by identifying and correcting errors. Criticism allows knowledge to grow beyond the limitations of its original discoveries.

Naturalistic explanations seek to understand events through natural processes rather than treating supernatural intervention as the final explanation. Thales believed that water was the fundamental source of all things. That specific claim was incorrect, but the broader underlying idea is that the world can be understood through principles operating within nature. Modern science relies on this orientation. For example, instead of explaining lightning as the expression of a God's anger, physics investigates electrical charge, electric fields, and the breakdown of air. The difference is not that one explanation sounds more scientific. A physical explanation provides relationships and mechanics that can be studied, tested, and used to make predictions. Once we understand a mechanism, we can potentially use that knowledge to solve other problems. However, there is an important nuance: modern science doesn't claim that every question has already been answered. It assumes that natural phenomena can be investigated and that explanations can improve.

Thales also helped popularise the idea that apparently different phenomena might be explained through the same underlying principle. Consider the force of gravity. A falling apple and the orbit of the moon look like very different events. Yet newton's theory of universal gravitation explained both through the same underlying physical law. This is an extraordinary intellectual achievement. Instead of inventing a separate explanation for every observation, we search for a principle that accounts for many observations at once. The same approach appears throughout science: The laws of motion explain a wide range of mechanical phenomena. Evolution by natural selection explains many patterns in the diversity of life, and Electromagnetic theory unifies phenomena involving electricity, magnetism, and light.

A universal principle compresses many observations into a coherent explanation. But the unification alone is not sufficient: the principle must be able to account for the relevant evidence. A single grand theory that explains everything only by making vague claims is not a good scientific explanation. The deeper lesson is that reality may contain common structures beneath its apparent diversity, and discovering those structures can dramatically expand our knowledge.

While Thales is associated here with explaining the natural world, Socrates brought systematic questioning to questions about how human beings should live. Earlier Greek thinkers often concentrated on cosmology: the origin and the structure of the universe. Socrates increasingly turned his attention to questions such as:

What is Justice?

What does it mean to be courageous?

What makes a person virtuous?

What is a good life?

How should we treat others?

These questions may sound familiar, but they are difficult to answer precisely. Consider the question, "What is Justice?" Someone might say that justice means giving everyone what they deserve. But what does a person deserve? Another person might say that justice means obeying the law. But what if the law itself is unjust? Each answer raises further questions. The purpose of philosophical inquiry is to examine those questions rather than settle for a definition that merely sounds convincing.

The Socratic method uses questions and dialogue to examine beliefs, uncover contradictions, and clarify concepts. For example, a person says being brave means never feeling fear. A Socratic conversation might proceed like this: Is a person brave if they run into danger without understanding the risk? Is someone who feels fear but acts to protect another person necessarily less brave? Could understanding danger actually make courage more meaningful? The original definition begins to break down. The participants must reconsider what courage means. This is not simply a clever debating technique. It is a way of recognizing that we may use important words without fully understanding the ideas behind them.

Socrates often examined the beliefs of ordinary Athenians through conversations rather than restricting philosophy to abstract speculation. The lesson is that our everyday beliefs deserve the same intellectual scrutiny as our theories about stars or the structure of matter. Suppose an entire society believes that a particular group of people deserves fewer rights. If that belief is treated as unquestionable tradition, injustice can continue indefinitely. But once someone asks, "What justifies this unequal treatment?" the belief becomes open to examination.

Further questions might reveal that the supposed justification is inconsistent, unsupported, or merely unacceptable. The process doesn't guarantee that everyone will agree on the answer. It creates the possibility of challenging an inherited belief and replacing it with a better one. Progress requires the freedom to question not only our explanations of nature but also our moral and social ideas.

Moral realism means that moral questions are not necessarily matters of personal preference alone. Some actions can genuinely be wrong, and some moral beliefs can be better justified than others. For example, two people discuss retaliation. One believes that if someone harms you, you are justified in harming them in return. The other argues that retaliation can create further injustice and we should seek a response that doesn't itself commit a wrong. Rather than treating those positions as equally valid simply because different people hold them. We can examine their consequences, consistency, and underlying principles.

Socrates himself held strong moral convictions, including opposition to committing injustice even in retaliation. We need not accept every one of his conclusions to recognize the significance of subjecting moral ideas to rational examination. Being open to criticism doesn't mean believing that every opinion is equally good. It means that even our strongest moral convictions should be open to reasoned scrutiny.

Plato argued that the world we experience through our senses is not the whole story. He emphasized abstract forms, which he regarded as more fundamental than the imperfect physical objects we consider. To understand the basic intuition behind his view, consider a circle. You can draw a circle on paper, on a screen, or in the sand. Every physical drawing will have some imperfection. Its edges may be uneven, and it may not be perfectly symmetrical. Yet you can reason about the mathematical properties of a perfect circle regardless of the material on which you draw it. The mathematical concept is not identical to any particular drawing. Plato extended this kind of reasoning beyond mathematics, including to concepts such as justice and beauty.

Abstractions are genuinely important to understanding the world. Mathematical objects, rules, and theories can help explain things that we can't understand through observations alone. For example, in a chess match, if you want to explain why a player won, describing the physical movements of the wooden pieces is insufficient. You also need to understand the abstract rules of chess and the strategies employed by the players. Likewise, physics can't be reduced to descriptions of what we see. We need abstract concepts and mathematical relationships to explain why events occur. Abstract reasoning is indispensable, and it must remain part of the ongoing process of improving our explanations.

Aristotle, Plato's student, placed greater emphasis on investigating the physical world directly. Instead of relying primarily on abstract speculation about ideal forms, Aristotle studied living organisms, classified species, and developed explanations based on observation. Suppose you want to understand how birds fly. You can begin by reasoning about the ideal shape of a flying animal. That might generate interesting hypotheses. But you also need to observe actual birds:

How do their wings move?

How does their body shape affect flight?

How do different species behave in air?

What happens when their environment changes?

Observations provide evidence that can challenge your assumptions. Aristotle also argued that Earth is spherical, drawing on observations such as a ship disappearing hull first over the horizon. The example illustrates how an everyday observation can support a more general explanation of the physical world.

There are basically two types of knowledge: a priori and a posteriori. A priori is the knowledge or justification obtained through reasoning without depending on actual observations. For instance, deriving a mathematical relationship from stated assumptions. A posteriori is the knowledge or justification that depends on experience or observation. For instance, determining which material conducts electricity by testing it.

Scientists often combine mathematical reasoning, observations, experiments, and theoretical assumptions. For example, a physicist might derive a prediction from a theory and then conduct an experiment to see whether the prediction holds. Reason generates possibilities. Evidence helps us evaluate them.

Conclusion: The contributions of Thales, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. don't amount to a complete modern scientific method. Rather, they illustrate several intellectual practices that later thinkers could develop and refine. Together, they point toward a society in which ideas can be proposed, criticized, tested, and improved. This is not a guarantee that every investigation succeeds. Nor does every criticism produce something useful. But a culture that permits sustained inquiry has a way to learn from mistakes instead of preserving them indefinitely.

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Photo by Brian Kungu on Unsplash