How to Study

(b) THE STUDENT MUST CLEARLY DISTINGUISH MERE FACTS FROM CONCLUSIONS OR OPINIONS.--Mere facts, some of which may be the result of laborious investigation, may be accepted without verification, if the authority is good. When the student reads that the river Nile rises in Equatorial Africa, flows in a northerly direction through Egypt into the Mediterranean sea, he cannot verify this statement nor reason out that it must be so. It is a mere fact and a name, and he simply accepts it, perhaps looking at the map to fix the fact in his mind. So, too, if he reads that the atomic weight of oxygen is 16, or that a cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds, he cannot be expected to perform the experiments necessary to verify these statements. If he were to do this throughout his reading, he would have to make all the investigations made in the subject since man has studied it, taking no advantage of the labor of others.

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