Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than minority of them - never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
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We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
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Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
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Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it
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In the realm of ideas it is better to let the mind sally forth, even if some precious preconceptions suffer a mauling.
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