Beware the Ivory Tower.

[thedoc]

Too many times a philosopher will try to "think" his way to the truth, when the actual truth is staring him right in the face. I hope you will excuse the rather mundane example, but here it is. Many years ago someone wrote in to a model railroad magazine asking "How full should I load my hopper cars with coal". The editor answering this letter immediately retreated to his "Ivory Tower" to compose his answer, rather than consulting the real world. He wrote "Lets think about it" and proceeded to say that he would only load the hopper so that when the load settled during transit, none of the coal would spill out over the side. Then advising the writer to make the load just a little below the top edge of the car. The problem was that in that very publication there were photos of loaded hopper cars coming out of the mines, loaded to the edge and heaped up above the edge, in contrast to the advice he was giving to the writer of the letter. This editor had made the mistake of trying to out think the people who actually did this every day. Apparently the shippers were not worried about the small amount of coal that might be lost and were more concerned about getting the maximum amount of product to the receiver as possible. If that meant that some was lost, so be it. Many times a philosopher will try to think through a question rather that looking at the real world to see how it is actually done. I encountered the same problem in my own work experience. I had learned how to teach drafting in college, and was expected to teach that in high school to my students. Years later I actually worked as a draftsman in an industrial plant, and found that most of what I was taught in college was BS, and I had to relearn how to do the work.