How to Think | Bishop Fulton.J.Sheen

we received a letter from one of our Canadian listeners in Saskatchewan and it reads as follows I have a little brother and he says that all bishops are bald on top and I told him you were not he said it would be a miracle if you were not so would you take off your little hat and show him that you are not bald may I tell you a little man that the difference is this all of the other bishops had mothers who told them that they would all come out on top I have more problems than they do they don't have the problem of whether to part their hair on the middle the subject of this telecast is how to think first of all how to think about statistics and figures and graphs secondly how to think about new ideas first of all how to think about statistics there are two kinds of reasoning or two general ways of thinking now here we're getting very deep but it's only it'll only last for a second you can turn off to another program while I explain this then come back it'll be over briefly one way of reasoning is called deduction and that is from the universal to the particular for example all men are mortal John is the man therefore John is lawful and the other reasoning from which there come graphs and statistics is induction induction is from the particular to the general or the universal now one of the reasons why we have to use this particular kind of reason is because we would never know certain conclusions unless we made an investigation that's one of the reasons we have to have statistics for example suppose you wanted to answer such questions as these is marmalade stickier than Jam will you have to use induction and go around and stick your finger in marmalade in jams or this problem do babies with blue booties cry louder than babies with pink booties which two men prefer night church or pajamas that's the question you would have to investigate you never could find it out by deduction now these inductions can be complete when you investigate all of the cases and all of the samples or they can be incomplete there are very few that are actually complete for example a mother has four children three of them in the room she says where is Wendelin as soon as he gets the answer she has complete induction he's made an investigation of the location of all of her children now incomplete induction means that you cannot investigate all cases so you take some samples and investigate a few from these you get statistics you get brats I want to tell you about a graphic picture that I have hanging in my office and I have it hanging there an order that I will never take graphs and statistics too seriously I want you to take a look at it it is the title of it is the fun for the poor of the world and the 12 months are at the top and the line the graph is very very low in fact the fundus low until you get to the month of June and then in June it's skyrocket and then comes down again very low the rest of the year I am seated at a desk answering a telephone and I'm saying to someone looking at the graph let's see now last year I was away in June that's when everything went up suppose now we wanted to make some statistical finding about how many youths in America under 21 years of age said their prayers how could we do it well one method we might telephone them and say are you saying your prayers and then secondly we might hide a camera in the bedroom and take a picture of them and thirdly we might also ask them to keep a diary and write down every time they said their prayers suppose now I gave you a statistic suppose I investigated the number that said their prayers or I said that I did and I gave you this answer the 12.3% of the use of America under 21 years of age say their prayers now you'd be very much impressed with that wouldn't you because there's that 3% and we would say my that must be scientific that 12.3 that was one of the great advantages incidentally if the Irish opened the advertisement iris up 99 and 44 100% pure and you would say to yourself my goodness if I every soap admitted that there's 56 one hundreds of one percent impurity that must be good so it was the fraction that got you all right now suppose I said that 12.3 I'm going to tell you how we might arrive with that conclusion suppose I investigators cannot investigate all of the use in America suppose i phone six hundred dollars from which I got well 0.3 I'm going to give you some rules or statistics and notice how they're going to be worked out whenever you hear a statistic always ask these questions one how many possible cases are there that is to say how many cases could be tested to how many were tested three can you believe what they told you that was the problem Kinsey can did everybody tell kensic the truth not on your life look you can't be sure if you call up the boys that did you say your prayer that they said their prayers and forth if it comes from an independent laboratory who paid for the experiment if cigarette x-bow blows much better smoke rings than cigarette why who paid for that investigations the independent laboratory isn't it visit for their health you know now keeping this in mind both we investigated 600 how many boys and girls are there the United States under 21 years of age 60 million 160 thousand you think that's a pretty good test how many are we getting we're getting six out of every 600 1600 work that out in percentages what percentage of the part of the youth of the country are we testing now get this I'm not finished yet of 1% you see I'm a rapid calculator did you ever hear about the rapid calculator was a man who was on a train somebody behind him said 648 cows of the past by one field 1238 cows 78 thousand individuals curious he said how do you count them so fast with his train going this way so that I'm a rapid calculator and he stirred at Kapolei / 4 [Applause] all right if I investigated 600 cases out of the 60 million I've only sampled 0.0009 nine percent of the cases how much is it worth nothing nothing from the point of your reason remember to 1936 there the literary digest sampled 10 million people and after sampling 10 million people as to how they would vote they concluded that the electoral votes in November of that year would be 374 landon and 160 ones for Roosevelt and they consulted 10 million what do you suppose we're going to get if we can sell six or eight hundred did Landon become president anybody got an old land and button just to remind to these things Oh another sample some years ago Johns Hopkins University admitted women to the University the following year was reading in a work on statistics figure was given out 33 and 1/3 percent of the women who attended Johns Hopkins University married professors that was marvelous opportunity for young women going to a university they would have a choice of all of these learners men all right what are the laws of figures one how many cases were possible - how many were investigated so we asked how many students were there at Johns Hopkins women 3 how many Mary - professor Wong [Applause] so if you want to think clearly always always find out how many cases were possible before you believe a statistic now here's one statistic that you can take from me that is absolutely reliable and it's worth remembering 50% of all of the married people in the United States are women the other 50 or men now another way to think is never completely follow a move see there are styles in thinking just as there are styles and women's clothes I once saw a man running like mad with a hat box in his hand I said what are you running for he says I'm trying to get the Hat home before it gets out of style well there are fashions in thinking tools and the fashions in thinking are made by sciences for example we've had a had a three styles we had biology was the very popular science at one time than physics and then psychology in 1859 when Darwin published his origin the species and not scientists now but popularizers Lehrer sizers romanticizes those who felt that art and literature and everything else should dance to the tune fight for it via science made everything evolved for example cried out and wrote about the evolution of God evolution of marriage by Westermarck creative evolution by Burke's which the whole cosmos was evolving I used to attend lectures University of Paris dark song was there teaching and he was very popular you see because he had romanticized this it was the mood and fashion to talk of evolution in those days and you had to go sit through a dull stale flat unprofitable lecture on on mathematics in order to save your seat for Bergson's lecture and all of the fashionable Dame's of Paris and London were there you'd find outside of the College de France you'd find automobiles rolls-royce and our walk Aires is finest saweeza Raynaud's and all the fine machines I remember one day coming out of the class of Bergson some English ladies spoke to me cheese's wasn't that a wonderful lecture I said What did he say and so she told me something that he didn't say and I spoke to her in French she didn't understand a word of French with Bergson was wonderful so it was the fashion then that fashion died then when Einstein developed his theory of relativity then we got a whole group of lira cisors here who said that everything is relative relative to space-time and then we got relativity of morals relativity of law and then we got a new kind of literature in which we were constantly getting back to new beginnings remember Gertrude Stein to roses roses roses roses rose and professor Alfred North Whitehead of Harvard said the God is a creature whose matrix is space-time it was just a popular thing to do to talk about space-time and then that seems to be popular and then we got into the domain of psychology and when Freud as this scientist published his work in which he he developed the importance of the sub consciousness which is which was indeed a great scientific contribution there immediately cropped up here those who made everything dance to the tune of psychology then you got juvenile delinquency explained away as an edifice complex God was called a father complex then you got a new style of literature notice today the chart stories don't end they just stop there are no characters in literature like the were in the Victorian era characters with an ethical simplicity like Micawber or Uriah Heep they're like they're disconnected like pearls in the string that it's the string of which is broken and one is it was said only today the psychology of every that's because it happens to be a movement now the point is this one cannot take and you think well remember that you cannot take the methods and the conclusions of one science and apply them indiscriminately to another science each science has its own object its own method and it is entitled of that method but you cannot take it cannot take biology and apply it to engineering you cannot take the subject of a sentence and apply it to another another sentence for example take for example the sentence this sentence here Mathilde is artistic and now take the sentence the piggie porky is fat enough to kill now can you take the predicate artistic and apply it to this sentence here and say porky is artistic can you take this porky is fat enough to kill and apply it to Mathilde what neither can you take the conclusions of one science simply because there's evolution the biological order doesn't follow the goddess evolving that marriage is evolving and everything else is evolving when for example you have a hurt the palm of your hand you do not call in a florist something you'll break the key in your door you do not call in a piano tuner something happens to your windpipe you don't call in a plumber if you want to discover the authenticity of a Rembrandt you don't call him the Lord Chancellor he's a specialist in law but he's not necessarily a specialist in art therefore every particular science has its own domain its own method and a good thinker will not allow the methods and the categories and the theories to overflow into other domains and furthermore it's always a good thing to remember that if you marry the mood the mood or the spirit of an age you will be a widow in the next one these fashions simply do not laugh and it is not to be said but if one does not follow each of these fashions that one is behind the times no one is behind the scenes sees the theories that were popular years ago will be forgotten in 10 or 15 years but we both will have some principles that do not change to live by who today knows Herbert Spencer how many books of Herbert Spencer are taken out of the public libraries of the knighted States yet everybody read Spencer 50 years ago nobody knows him today that's going to be true the same ones who create the move to this hour therefore to think well when asked to have principles that are independent of space and time by which one can live we know that these principles exists and we know there's such a thing as truth simply because there's a logue Auster's and intelligence behind the universe one of the great fears frills of thinking is to know all the sides but also to know what is right and what is true why it's a romance very much as Chesterton says like driving a chariot six wild horses driving them down a mountain Lane Road and on either side with this mountain road there's a ravine here precipice here chasm here and a pit here the thrill of following truth is to drive those horses straight down that line oh it's the easiest thing in all the world to be a righteous for example in politics all you gotta do is tumble over the easiest thing in the world to be a leftist just fall over let go the easiest thing in the world to be an Aryan and the 4th or 5th century easiest thing in the world to tumble into some move today very easy to be a communist just as simple as falling off a log very easy to be a Nazi all you gotta do is fall under the other side so the great romance of truth therefore consists in ewing's of this straight line knowing the pitfalls driving the horses of truth directly seeing all of these errors and moves frustrates and solemn and forgotten but driving a hit really but erect that's the romance of thinking that's the joy [Applause]

Channel: The Catholic World

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Keywords: english catholic songs, catholic songs, malayalam catholic songs, christian songs, malayalam christian songs, devotional songs, religious songs, malayalam religious songs, tamil catholic songs, kerala devotional songs, thecatholicworld, the catholic world, malayalam songs.jesus songs, bishop fulton sheen, bishop fulton.j.sheen, ewtn english mass, english mass

Id: J69VD-DpJ4g

Length: 23min 14sec (1394 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 22 2014