They offered these altered articles to the same professors, along with the original versions, and asked for a comparative evaluation. Most of those learned pedagogues, never guessing that they were in essence reading the same article to which not a thought had been added, and from which none had been deleted, declared they preferred the more complex version. When asked why, they replied that the more intel lectual-sounding version showed better research, deeper thought, and greater insight. It can be astonishing, the extent to which theories learned during the formative years can direct a person s later perceptions of reality. Any error learned early distorts the very way one reasons.
False premises lead to false conclusions no matter how clever the line of reasoning.
Theories imposed on reality are allowed to pose as substitutes for the reality itself. We see this tendency in psychologists who insist, in defiance of their own direct experience, that the mind of a newborn baby is a blank slate on which environ ment will write the impressions that will form his personality. Nothing in objective reality supports this theory. Parents know how very different, from birth, each child is from all the others. Therefore, it is so.