Socrates. Suppose to be the first good philosopher. Always claimed he didn't know anything. He always, always said ignorance is my field. But he has one art, one skill: the art of questioning. His method was to question people back and forth, it was called la mayeutica. The way to, to let things happen. And one example is, is interesting. It's, of course, he never wrote anything. Plato wrote the dialogue. So, the dialogue is called Meno, Meno. And during this dialogue, Socrates dialogues with a slave and comes with this question. He asks the slave, would you please double the size of the square. And, through questions then answer, in the first step the, the slave proposed something like that. Like that. And, of course, might be a good way, but you have to give exactly the length of the added piece to the, to the the side. And, finally, Socrates happens to, he didn't tell anything to slave, but he did in such a way, from the slave the idea came of building the square of the, on the diagonal, which is exactly, of course, double. As the first square, which was the exercise. And I love it, because it means that when philosophy is born, at the same time, the art of the question is born. We can use this message in the business area. The message of Socrates about questioning is valid today. Questions are really important. And, I remember one day I was probably convincing, and after the workshop the boss decided to organize meetings with agenda, but each item put on the agenda has to be put in the form of a question just to increase the efficiency of the meeting. This shows that questioning can be im, improved in the business corporations. So this video is about questioning. Should embrace all the kind of questions. Sometimes people come with, and others say, this is a stupid question. Stupid questions don't exist. They don't exist. They are disturbing, of course, but I remember the child asking me what does the wind do when it doesn't blow? It looks like a stupid question. No, no. It brings us back to the essence. We saw it in the former video, the essence. And no question is stupid. If I ask you, which is the birthday of the Earth? It looks like a stupid question. What's the time on the moon? Yeah, what's the time on the moon? Can be anytime, so. No question is stupid. And, the art of questioning is for example, also, the art of starting a discussion. A brainstorm, many meetings, often begin with a question. Sometimes, the problem is the problem. The way the question is presented is a question, is a problem, it's not the best one, and it's sometimes really efficient to reformulate the question. Sometime the philosopher can help in a company more on the question than and in the answer. Recently I had a workshop of big data. And I remember after the day the client told me, thank you, now I know how to start thinking. [INAUDIBLE] thinks we spend a whole day and at the end he said, no I now how to start. But to me, to me this, this was really good. So, the questions. Yes, pay attention to questions. The way you start a meeting, some questions are better than other, and you can choose your own set of criteria to be sure the question is relevant, efficient, appropriate. For example, a question should always be open. How, what, to open doors. And the question should be visible, accessible to the eyes. That's true for the whole thinking. If I tell you a ping pong table. In here you have an image. If I tell you a table. You have an image. If I tell you a furniture, maybe you have no image anymore. Because furniture is too conceptual, and this is true for tables, for everything. You have, like a line, below you have images. But if you go up to concepts at a given time, you don't have images any more. Like furniture. You understand, but you don't see. Probably to run a discussion or a brainstorm in a company, you should try to remain constantly below the image line. At any time, people should think with their eyes, imaginations work with images. It's not a coincidence. So, you have many, many things to tell about questioning. The last one is a way to imagine questions, to help people to move things forward. And this is, at least in philosophy, we call that thought experiment. Thought experiment is just a what if, what if. It's done in such a way it helps to move things forward. And we can learn a lot from great philosophers. I'll give you three examples. One it comes from Berkeley. Berkeley, he was convinced that perception really is the key. If you cannot perceive, there is no reality, et cetera. And his question was imagine a forest, a forest. When where a tree is falling down, but there is nobody to hear the question, does it make noise? Not easy to answer, and it depends on what you call noise. It forces you to think forward, and that's the goal of thought experiment. The second one comes from Descartes, Descartes. You remember this spider, bee, and ant metaphor of Bacon. I just saw a couple of videos ago. Descartes was a spider. He was convinced, man can produce knowledge out of himself. How to. And he wants to convince other people he was right. So he has this question, he said this, imi, imagine some wax. A piece of wax. You put it on fire. What happens? Very easy. Everything is changing. The color, the shape, the smell. Probably the touch probably the size, the temperature. Everything is different. Question. Is it the same wax? Of course it is. It was there. But that's how Descartes showed you can not take all knowledge only out of the experience. Which was the belief of the ants, according to Bacon. And, the third, and the last thought experiment is from another world. It comes from James, William James, William James. He's the founder of a discipline called, pragmatism. And he has a very interesting one. Imagine a tree, a tree, and a squirrel clinging on the tree. At the opposite side you have a man, a Roman. And of course he cannot see the squirrel because there is a tree between the squirrel and himself. So he moves around the tree. But no matter how fast he moves around the tree, the squirrel moves as well. Now the question, after the complete turn of the tree, the question is, did the man go around the squirrel. On one hand say yes, but if you define go around like to see the back, then the answer is no.
