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The Way I Think > Chapter 8: Experience and
Inexperience, Youth and Age
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Experience is venerated in our society, if not the age by which one acquires it; I would like to suggest that inexperience has definite and overlooked merits as well. Nearly all major scientific discoveries were made by inexperienced scientists -- that is to say, people who were learning their disciplines and had not yet assimilated its blind spots. In gaining experience, one learns to see certain things, but also not to see certain things; one involuntarily shuts out a great many bad things, and a few greatly good things. Zen talks about having a beginner's mind.
There are cognitive differences between children and adults, and between a young adult and an older one. Average children are far more creative than talented adult engineers; children are novices par excellence. They haven't learned an adult way of seeing things.
As per the attitude of the previous chapter, I do not advocate functioning in one of these modes, although I have spelled out the virtue of inexperience and the problem of experience as these are less well-known than their counterparts. What I do advocate is a fluidity in moving between them -- and in the last case, not just between child and adult, but in the range between child and senior. The present grandmaster of ninjutsu wrote that life begins at 70; although this book is primarily written for young people (primarily because they are at a point of being able to choose how a greater portion of their lives will go, and are less set in their ways), there is a great deal to be said for seniority. There is real truth in the image of the old, wise man.
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The Way I Think > Chapter 8: Experience and
Inexperience, Youth and Age
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