Aherne: What are the proper paths of acquiring knowledge?

Approximating reality based on a cummulation of logics, reason and personal observation is the path one must take whenever the subject can be assailed based on observation. Here the key aspect is observation: it must be comprehensive enough to cover the issue entirely. Because reality is amorphous, every reasoning step peels the original of its rough parts (the same way a diamond ore is cut), turning it further away of its original. Therefore, not only one has to make sure his observation is rock solid, but that fewest possible logical steps are taken before making a judgment, in order to keep a closest relation to the un-peeled original. 

Now let's assume you have covered the issue entirely. The next step is to unify these views into a body of evidence and in order to do that, you must use logics and reason to guard against dead ends. Logics must be free from flaws, which is not very difficult. What's really difficult is to keep your subject away of infestation by personal motives. When you think properly, you must let evidence speak for itself. Your awareness of environment shuts down and a state of creative trance ensues. Trying to emulate creative trance for the sake of self-gratification is of course worthy of contempt. This isn't an end in itself, but an absolute requirement for a proper immersion into the subject. I find this aspect to be the most ignored, yet the cause of most flaws in apparently correct statements. In a few words: when man thinks, thinking is [I][B]for[/B][/I] himself and it takes a superhuman effort to circumvert its effects.

Another option is to build knowledge by trust. Instead of building the stairs, you walk on those built by others before you and build a few ones yourself. This way, in theory, knowledge builds incrementally and becomes least affected by personal motives. The flaw of this path is inherent to the mechanism it relies on: if it isn't kept in mint condition (which means that incissive thought is performed on every step, hardly a common scenario), it stumbles and derails to a dead end. This is the history of humanism: it started by acknowledging man's place in natural world (as a reaction to Christianity) and by using flawed logics and unwarranted premises it has become the quintessence of untruth under the veil of scientific respectability. What better proof for its insanity than affirming the nigger (which is hardly anything more than a talking chimp) is a white man's equal (whose intellectual and artistic achievements speak for themselves)? To arrive at such a conclusion, which flat out contradicts all forms of observation (empirical or scientific), speaks volumes how derailed thinking can become if trust of "respectable sources" is the pathway to knowledge. Hitler and all the great minds of 20th century have warned us of this plague in most unkind words and we are now bearing the fruits of our failure to deal with it sqarely, which has been cleverly exploited by the bloodthristy parasite that has always tested our strength.

So what is better? In every circumstance where subject can be known by a single person without reference to any previous views, personal observation takes lead because, at most, it carries the ballast of a single self. In every circumstance where subject cannot be known by a single person without reference to any previous views, scientific thought takes lead.