I read a question about why pregnant women don’t tip over. It was interesting to find that this is because the bones in their lower backs are shaped more like wedges than those of males. When women become increasingly pregnant, they can lean back on their spines to support and balance the additional weight.
A simple question led to curiosity to find the answer and gain new knowledge.
We tend to play down the importance of what we consider silly questions or explanations. I recall here that the aerial communication lines in Canada got interrupted by snow, which caused heavy losses to communication companies.
In a brainstorming session, somebody commented that he saw a wolf shaking the poles holding the aerial cables and causing snow to fall down. The participants exploded in laughter and asked if they should use wolves to get rid of the cables from the snow.
One participant then said the idea is not to use wolves to shake poles; it was to shake the poles appropriately. This led to the creative idea of using helicopters to fly low above the aerial cables to shake them with the vibration of the helicopters. This method was put in practice.
So, from the above two cases, if silly questions may lead to great discoveries, what other questions may you think of? I share here a few of mine, hoping that the readers will share theirs too.
- When somebody says this is only expected of you, would you ask why it is expected?
- Why do shops show items up-down and not down-up?
- Why did people used to drink only hot tea? Maybe this question led to the idea of iced tea!
- Empty minds, what are they full of? This is in keeping with the fact that nature abhors emptiness.
- What other materials than salt lower the freezing point of water? The idea also stretched to adding table salt to ice cream to lower its freezing temperature. This invites for question- ‘are there similar treatments for people who tend to freeze in fear?
- What other natural phenomena do we observe and do not question why the apple fell down?
- Why not use, say, a Fibonacci number as an imaginary number, such as the square root of -5 instead of i, which equals the square root of -1?
- Is imagination the negative image of logic?
The power of what we consider naïve or simple questions can be stronger than what we may imagine.
The article itself is stimulating and makes us understand the importance of questions.
I think that the most important quality in a person is to ask questions, to not be satisfied with what he knows, to seek answers. The purpose of questions is to arrive at new insights, to better understand problems, to open new perspectives. We should not forget that every question we give up on asking is a missed opportunity not only in terms of understanding, knowledge and relationships, but also in terms of creativity. Four-year-old children know this very well.
And yet it seems that as they grow, curiosity and questions diminish.
I propose:
Why does the propensity to ask questions begin to decrease with access to school education, and gradually die out over the years of school? Could it be because at school the priority is given to knowledge and answers, and not to questions? And how much do the annoyed reactions of parents affect them, who, when their children ask questions, reply: “Don’t ask so much”, or: “Be careful, instead of asking”? Don’t similar comments and reactions cause, in children, and then in teenagers, a certain insecurity that leads to the loss of the ability to ask questions?
What great questions, Brother Ali!
I especially love “Is imagination the negative image of logic?” Perhaps that is one thing that imagination is. And perhaps it is one great way of thinking of a solution -by thinking of its inverse?
Empty minds? What are they full of? What fills the void during meditation should be written down. Might it be what is distracting me in my life or might it be something I’ve been ignoring that now requires focus?
I do love ice cream, but I’m not exactly sure of the physics of ice cream making. Doesn’t adding salt to the ice surrounding the ice cream container in the maker make the freezing mixture colder so the cream turns into ice cream? So removing salt from the wounds of the fear frozen might thaw them to action?
As usual your questions provoke my brain. Thank you.
Alan Culler That you asked more questions from the ones I asked is a great relief for me.
Salt may help improve the taste by the way and it is a physical act. According to Nasa
“Adding salt disrupts the equilibrium. The individual particles that make up salt (known as ions) arrange themselves around the water molecules. In doing so, they shield the water molecules from interactions among themselves, making it less likely that they will find each other and form ice.”
It is physical distraction.
So, I ask a new question- what acts would distract a fearful person away from his fears?
Dear Brother- you made me think and so thank you