BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WAS AMERICA'S GREATEST TEACHER (Part 2)

Some of Benjamin Franklin's wise sayings:  

• Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
• Early to bed and early to rise
  makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
• Lost time is never found again.
• Without continuous growth and progress,
  such words as improvement, achievement, and success
  have no meaning.
• An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
• By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
• We are all born ignorant,
  but one must work hard to remain stupid.
• Either write something worth reading
  or do something worth writing.
• It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation
  and only one bad one to lose it.
• In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.
• Any fool can criticize and complain,
  and most fools do.
• Well done is better than well said.
• The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
• Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.
• Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a being a better person.
• From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.
• All mankind is divided into three groups:
  those that are immovable,
  those that are movable,
  and those that move.
  [another way to say the same thing--rather than "movable":
  those that are non-motivated, those that are motivated by others, and those that are self-motivated.]
• Being ignorant is not so much a shame
  as being unwilling to learn.
• Be slow in choosing a friend,
  slower in changing.
• Mine is better than ours.
• It is much easier to suppress a first desire
  than to satisfy those that follow.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WAS AMERICAS GREATEST TEACHER (Part 1)

Many generations of Americans have learned from Benjamin Franklin's teachings--most without even knowing from whom the thoughts originated.

My endeavor is to continuously self-improve and to help as many others as I can to do likewise. So, to start, I'm going to research principles proclaimed by Benjamin Franklin, and share them with all who are interested.

Besides writing many wise sayings in an almanac, Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, statesman, and publisher.

[An almanac is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, tide tables, and tabular information often arranged according to the calendar. Astronomical data and various statistics are found in almancs, such as the times of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, church festivals, and so on.]
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Poor Richard's Almanac 
[Source: Wikipedia]

Poor Richard's Almanac (sometimes Almanack) was a yearly almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of "Poor Richard" or "Richard Saunders" for this purpose. The publication appeared continually from 1732 to 1758. It sold exceptionally well for a pamphlet published in the American colonies; print runs reached 10,000 per year.

Franklin, the American inventor, statesman, and publisher, achieved success with Poor Richard's Almanac. Almanacs were very popular books in colonial America, offering a mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements. Poor Richard's Almanac was also popular for its extensive use of wordplay, and some of the witty phrases coined in the work survive in the contemporary American vernacular. Benjamin Franklin first published the Almanac under the name of "Richard Saunders" in 1732 and continued for 25 years.

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THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING IN IT IS ONE

For a better understanding, the mind analyzes or breaks things down into separate parts. This break-down is mentally artificial because the universe is one.

Our total makeup as individuals is physical (the whole body), mental (the brain's productivity), and emotional (the effects of the nervous system--which includes the brain, the spinal cord, and the many nerve cells that conduct information throughout the body).

An individual is not an isolated being; a person is an intricate part of the universe. As human beings, we have to deal with a physical environment, a mental environment, an emotional environment, and a social environment.

Since all is connected, and since we have to adapt or adjust to these ever-changing environments. We must continually balance ourselves in regards to each one in order to be happy or content.

To have and maintain a PHYSICAL BALANCE, we need air, water, food, sunlight, exercise, sleep, and sex.

The MENTAL balancing includes having adequate wisdom, knowledge, and a current flow of information necessary for sufficient awareness.

For an EMOTIONAL balance, it helps to have love and affection as well as to exercise rational and optimistic thinking.

And, the SOCIAL balancing includes getting along with others in one's environment, cooperating with some people for benevolent purposes, and harmonizing oneself in a oneness with all people in a humane way for the good of humanity.

ACCURATE THINKING

What EVERY good thinker who wants to be an accurate thinker should persistently and consistently endeavor to do is to think OBJECTIVELY.

HE OR SHE should persistently and consistently strive to do WHATEVER should be done rather than what he or she wants to do.

NATURE, HUMANITY, AND ONESELF should be considered in EVERY decision that one should make.

GOD IS AN IDEA, NOT A FACT

Any words uttered or symbols presented can make a statement.

A statement is a meaningful communication to someone.

If a statement is not a fact, it's an idea.

A fact is a statement that has been proven.

An idea is a statement that has NOT been proven.

A SCIENTIFIC METHOD

A SCIENTIFIC METHOD is a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in SYSTEMATIC OBSERVATION, MEASUREMENT, AND EXPERIMENT, AND THE FORMULATION, TESTING, AND MODIFICATION OF HYPOTHESES.

ANYBODY CAN USE A SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO DISCOVER KNOWLEDGE OR VERIFY INFORMATION OR JUSTIFY BELIEFS.

Science is not some mystical phenomenon that is the domain of the gifted.

SCIENCE MERELY REFERS TO THE BODY OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED BY USAGE OF A SCIENTIFIC METHOD.

Thus, SCIENTISTS are people who use or have been trained to use a scientific method to discover, verify, or JUSTIFY information or beliefs.

ANY dissemination of information that has not originated by usage of a scientific method has been acquired by using a method antiquated prior to the 17th century.

AND, any so-called knowledge that originated prior to the 17th century and has not been verified using a scientific method is unreliable.

HOW DO I KNOW? (based upon the writings of Chris Redford)

How do I know what is real?
Why do I believe what I believe?
What am I justified to believe?

For years, ancient Greek philosophers argued convincingly that we could know nothing with absolute certainty--that is, until Rene Descartes uttered, "I think, therefore I am." This is the only necessarily true statement that is beyond doubt.

Thus, even if one thinks, then one cannot necessarily justify the existence of other beings; but, if one thinks, one can justify one's own existence as a thinking being.

So, if I purge all of my beliefs and add back only those which I can justify, I can only justify my own existence because my perceptions can be inaccurate. For example, I have been asleep and believing that what was happening was really happening--only to awaken and find out that it was only a dream. Thus I could be dreaming about anything that I perceive to be true.

Therefore, other than knowing that I exist, I don't actually know that anyone or anything else exists so I have to make a presupposition (an assumption) and that presupposition is:

At least some of my perceptions (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) are accurate--that is, that they reflect reality.

Of course, none of my perceptions are necessarily accurate but without this presupposition, I have nowhere to go epistemologically.

[Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that investigates what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.]

Without this presupposition, I can prove nothing to be absolutely true except that I myself exist (but only as a thinking being and only to myself), but I could not prove that anything else exists--not even to myself.

Thus, presupposing that at least some of my perceptions are accurate, how do I make conclusions about reality?

(1) I form beliefs about reality based on physical evidence.

(2) The strength of my beliefs should be directly proportional to the amount of evidence I have for them.

(3) If I ever doubt the validity of a conclusion that I make based on evidence, I can return to that evidence, re-examine it, and see if I come to the same conclusion.

Thus for beliefs to be justified they must be grounded in evidence. Beliefs that have more evidence are more justified, and beliefs that have less evidence are less justified.

(4) It would be unfeasible for me to personally collect all the evidence I use for my beliefs. However, I can gather new types of evidence in the form of the multimedia and testimonies given by other people. But, I cannot place as much confidence in multimedia and testimonies as I can in direct physical evidence.

If I want to maximize my confidence in the physical evidence given to me by other people, I should use such evidence as a starting point and then investigate such evidence myself.

If I refuse to do this with any such belief, I must accept that my confidence is lower than it would be if I had verified such beliefs myself.