When I was in junior high school, there were many famous quotes posted on the classroom wall. I remember one of them was from Zhuangzi: My life has a limit, but my knowledge has no limit.

The teacher probably never explained its meaning to us, but even with our shallow classical Chinese skills at the time, we could probably understand the meaning of these two sentences: life is limited, but knowledge is infinite, so we must have With a sense of urgency, we must seize all time to learn scientific and cultural knowledge.

Later I learned that these two sentences were not finished and there were more after them. The complete sentence is actually:

It means: Our lives are limited, but knowledge is infinite. It is futile to pursue infinite knowledge with limited lives.

From this point of view, it seems that using these two sentences as encouragement for seeking knowledge seems to be in the wrong place. If you think about it carefully, Zhuangzi, who studied under Laozi, talked about doing nothing, being natural, looking down on worldly fame, and pursuing one's own spiritual freedom. Judging from Zhuangzi's chic and elegant style, Zhuangzi's words are very likely to make us look down on it. Not only are material things not worth chasing, but if spiritual knowledge makes you exhausted, then forget it.

Zhuangzi wrote more than 100,000 words in his lifetime, collected into a volume called "Zhuangzi". This work made him not only a representative figure of Taoist philosophy alongside Laozi, but also a leading figure in language and literature in the pre-Qin period. "Zhuangzi" has a mature, elegant writing style and rich imagination. It is a treasure of ancient literature.

Such a character must be someone who has extremely high pursuit and achievements in the pursuit of knowledge. Why did he say such a thing?

In fact, it is wrong for us to take his words out of context and only use them as an incentive for us not to waste time and actively seek knowledge. However, it would be even more problematic if we think that Zhuangzi is advocating that we give up seeking knowledge.

He said: "It's almost impossible to follow the limitless life." The point is that we should not try to chase infinite knowledge in a limited life. Because if you do this, you will be exhausted and lost in the ocean of knowledge.

Therefore, the hidden content of this sentence is a matter of method. If you want to learn everything and pursue everything, it will definitely not work. In a limited life, if we want to learn knowledge and enrich our lives as much as possible, we must first find a way, and secondly, we must make choices.

There are generally two ways for us to learn knowledge and improve ourselves.

One is the inductive method. From childhood to adulthood, the most common and most widely used method is induction.

From the time we were toddlers and babbling, we have been constantly trying and summarizing. Through our own experiences, we know which statements are correct, which practices are effective, and which knowledge can be applied in which situations. The induction method is the most basic and most commonly used method for learning knowledge for each of us.

But the induction method has a disadvantage, that is, its efficiency is quite low. Just imagine, if all knowledge needs to be tried and summarized by ourselves, then we will only gain very limited life experience throughout our lives. If we only rely on this to learn knowledge and seek wisdom, then it will inevitably be like Zhuangzi said, "It is almost impossible to follow the limitless after the limitless."

Moreover, the cost of relying on inductive learning is quite high. What you experience may be beyond your ability to bear, and what you endure may not bring you what you want. Zhou Guoping once said,

This is exactly what he was talking about.

Fortunately, we have another way to learn knowledge and improve ourselves, and that is the deduction method.

The so-called deduction method is a method of inferring conclusions in other aspects through known principles. The knowledge we have is limited, but the problems we face will not appear selectively because of the limitations of your knowledge. This means that the problems we often face are outside our current knowledge.

However, the essence of many problems is similar, and many ideas for solving problems can also be used for reference. We can quickly learn knowledge we don’t know and improve our cognitive level by reading the wisdom summaries of our predecessors and learning from other people’s knowledge refinements. The so-called drawing inferences from one instance and drawing analogies are what we call deductive methods.

And the reason why knowledge becomes knowledge must be that it can help us solve problems at some level.

Using a certain truth or principle we have mastered to help us solve specific problems in applied practice is the most important manifestation of the role of the deductive method.

Here, practice is the most important part. If we read a certain sentence and only store it in our brains as knowledge, then it does not actually complete the knowledge in you. interpretation. Only when you practice this knowledge or principle and complete the unity of knowledge and action can it truly complete the process of learning knowledge through deduction.

Of course, in addition to having the right method to pursue infinite knowledge in a limited life, we also have to make choices. Each of us has limited time and energy. Among so many subject categories and so many interests and hobbies, we must choose one or several categories as our main focus. This may not only be the basis for our survival, but also the basis for our settlement.

If you think of life as a big river, pursuing the width of the river will not get you further, because an extremely wide river may eventually turn into a still lake. We should pursue the depth and length of the river of life, and seeking knowledge correctly is a feasible, or even the only feasible way.