Each of us inherits a culture made up in a part , of firmly accepted knowledge about the workings of the world. We may learn from others that planting corn in the spring will garner the greatest assistance from the gods , that eating too much candy will decay our teeth , that the circumference of a circle is approximately twenty-two sevenths of its diameter , or that masturbation will blind us .We may test a few of these “truths” on owr on our own.We simply accept the great majority of them . These are things that “everybody on”.
Tradition , in this sense of term , offers some clear advantages to human inquiry. By accepting what everybody knows.We are spared the overwhelming task of starting from scratch in our search for regularities and an understanding .Knowledge is cumulative , and inherited body of information and understanding is the jumping-of point for the development of more knowledge .We often speak of “standing on the shoulders of giant”.
At the same time , tradition may hinder human inquiry.If we seek a fresh understanding of something everybody already understands and has always understood. We may be marked as fools for our efforts.More to the paint ,however it rarely occurs to most of us to seek a different understanding of something we all “know ” to be true.
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