Norwich bulletin. [volume] (Norwich, Conn.) 1895-2011, 1916-03-25
IF YOU DON'T KNOW DON'T GUESS

that you are not to shoot at all unless
Shooting at and why you're
shooting. Or, to put it less figura-
lively and more practically, don't be-
gin doing things unless you know
what you want to accomplish and, in
general, how you expect to accomplish
it.
That's seems rather sensible.
Taken another way, the advice
might be construed as forbidding us
to start anything unless we knew for
certain, beforehand, how it was going
to turn out
Which would seem to limit the or
binary farmers activities to just
starving himself to death. For that is
about the only proceeding open to him
which he knows exactly how to ac-
complish with certainty.
And that isn't good medicine, by any
manner of means.
Perhaps in this, as in so many other
matters, there is a third road out.
The more I think of the phrase IF
you don't know, don't guess, the more
like it's sound. So much I frankly
confess.
There's difference between guess
ing and reasoning. To guess is
to form an opinion without certain
edge; while to reason is to draw
right differences from known facts.
For instance, there's the South
Meadow. may guess" that it will
grow good corn. l never planted any
there; no one ever did, to my knowl-
edge; I guess it will simply because
it ''sOrter kinder somehow seems to
me it oughter." That's one way to
farm.
Or, I dig into it and find that the
dirt is sticky and mucky and sour
ish. I observe that it looks very much
like the soil in one pocket of my last
years corn patch, where the corn was
a failure. Instead of blowing it all up
and planting to corn on a guess
| try just one corner with only half a
hundred hills of corn. And those hills
do not grow well. In fact they are
very poor, practically worthless.
| Whereupon, having learned by obser-
walton that the soil doesn't show
corn aptitude, and by test that it
won't produce good corn on one rep
, resentative corner, l deduce, as a
matter of reason, the inference that
my first guess" was all wrong and
| that the South Meadow is no place
for me to plant corn, if 1 want to get
| a crop.
In this sense, IF you don't know,
don't guess, is pretty near gospel.
Taken this way it really means:
eff you don't know, don't 60 it blind
but try to find OUT Troy to find out
the facts so that you may deduce
sound inference from them, if infer
ence is all you can hope for, and GER
tainty is out of the question.
| I don't know yet that the South
Meadow won't grow good corn. But
my reasoned inference that it won't
| isn't by any means a mere guess" II
is sound deduction from such at
| tendant or related facts as I can mar
| shall to help me reason about it.
| Anyway, that's the spirit in which
am going to take and repeat the live
stock prophets advice, IF you don't
know, don't guess.
Perhaps I've been q little bit care.
less not to say Slovenly in my owr
heretofore use of that word guess"
If 1 have. I beg pardon, all round anG
hope to do better.
do not think and never have THOUGH
that a farmer should do his farrnins
at random, without using all the
brains he has to discover the hes
thing to do and the best wav to d.
it. Farming by guess and by gosh
as the phrase goes, i. e. trusting sole
1y to luck and main strength to worr!
through is not a desirable method no
one worthy Of imitation.
We know in part and we prophes,
in part and we farm in part knowi
edge. The wisest and most expert
enced of ours are just children pick
ing up stray pebbles on the shores O
an infinite ocean of mystery. Wha
we do not know as far outreache
) what we do know as the boundary