on figuring things out for oneself
“Today we take for granted that originality is a word of praise. New strikes us as nearly synonymous with improved. But for nearly all of human history, a new idea was a dangerous idea. […] Most people would have agreed with the Spanish ruler Alphonse the Wise, who once decreed that the only desirable things in this world were ‘old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read.’ The best way to learn the truth, it was often observed, was to see what the authorities of the past had decreed. This was the plainest common sense. To ignore such wisdom in favor of exploring on one’s own was to seek disaster, akin to a foolish traveler’s taking it in his head to fling the captain overboard and grab the ship’s wheel himself."
"Looking for oneself meant second-guessing the value of eyewitness testimony. And for longer than anyone could remember, eyewitness testimony—whether it had to do with blood raining from the sky or the birth of half-human/half-animal monsters—had trumped all other forms of evidence. To accept such testimonials marked a person not as gullible or unsophisticated but as pious and thoughtful. To question such testimonials, on the other hand, […] was the ‘hallmark of the narrow-minded and suspicious peasant, trapped in the bubble of his limited experience.”
From The Clockwork History: Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick