Question: 
A group of soldiers were standing in the blistering sun facing due west. Their sergeant shouted at them: Right
turn! About turn! Left turn!
In which direction are they now facing?
Answer:
East. A right turn is 90 degrees,
an about turn is 180 degrees, and a left turn is also 90 degrees. Therefore, the soldiers are now facing east. |
THE WHITE HOUSE OF AMERICAN
Axioms of Historical Enigma
(#1). There will be found, no doubt, when ray history and tables of discovery are read, some things
in the experiments themselves that are not quite certain, or perhaps that are quite false, which may make a man think that
the foundations and principles upon which my discoveries rest are false and doubtful. But this is of no consequence, for such
things must needs happen at first. It is only like the occurrence in a written or printed page of a letter or two mistaken
or misplaced, which does not much hinder the reader, because such errors are easily corrected by the sense. So likewise may
there occur in my natural history many experiments which are mistaken and falsely set down, and yet they will presently, by
the discovery of causes and axioms, be easily expunged and rejected. It is nevertheless true that if the mistakes in natural
history and experiments are important, frequent, and continual, they cannot possibly be corrected or amended by any felicity
of wit or art. And therefore, if in my natural history, which has been collected and tested with so much diligence, severity,
and I may say religious care, there still lurk at intervals certain falsities or errors in the particulars, what is to be
said of common natural history, which in comparison with mine is so negligent and inexact? And what of the philosophy and
sciences built on such a sand (or rather quicksand)? Let no man therefore trouble himself for this.
APHORISM
(#2). On a given body, to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures is the work and aim of
human power. Of a given nature to discover the form, or true specific difference, or nature-engendering nature, or source
of emanation (for these are the terms which come nearest to a description of the thing), is the work and aim of human knowledge.
Subordinate to these primary works are two others that are secondary and of inferior mark: to the former, the transformation
of concrete bodies, so far as this is possible; to the latter, the discovery, in every case of generation and motion, of the
latent process carried on from the manifest efficient and the manifest material to the form which is engendered; and
in like manner the discovery of the latent configuration of bodies at rest and not in motion.
..........FRANCIS BACON....
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