Why steady reading helps expand thinking

Experience can broadly be divided into two types: direct experience and indirect experience. Direct experience is quick to be absorbed but is costly and has limited scalability, whereas indirect experience gained through steady reading compensates for these shortcomings.

Indirect experience accumulates over time and drives high-quality shifts in thinking, and Studyan explained that its power can be exerted even more strongly in the AI era.

The works of world-renowned scholars often become more difficult through the translation process and frequently fail to fully reflect Korean sensibilities. Studyan pointed out that this is a factor that makes readers find philosophy difficult.

By contrast, Go Yo-el's introductory philosophy book reflects Korean sensibilities and context, helping readers approach philosophical questions with ease. The book consists of 12 topics and 72 questions, and readers are encouraged to skim the table of contents and start with the questions that interest them.

Figures from Oxford and Cambridge (Oxbridge) account for 200 of the world's 1,000 Nobel Prize winners. This is analyzed as evidence that the admissions interview question style of the two universities, which expands thinking, has had a major influence.

Such questions give students's minds appropriate stimulation and lead them into thought experiments, enabling an expansion of thinking that is hard to achieve through direct experience.

We use words like 'beginning' and 'birth' in everyday life and think we know their meaning, but when we dig into their essence, we feel deep bewilderment.

Reflection on the beginning of humanity or the meaning of existence arising from 'nothing' (無) is essential to exploring the roots of human existence. Heidegger regarded asking about the meaning of being not as making a simple list, but as asking about the essence of being.

Kant's 'recognition of limits' refers to a state in which we inevitably presume as fact things about realms beyond human cognition. Since such realms cannot be directly experienced, they can be explored only through reading and study.

These two perspectives do not operate separately but complement each other, expanding the horizon of understanding. Studying the human brain can also be philosophically interpreted as the universe exploring itself.

For 『The Oxbridge Philosophy Class』, a reading method that rereads the book repeatedly over time and checks how one's thinking changes is more effective than finishing it in one go. This helps readers deeply understand philosophical concepts.

The purpose of the Oxford and Cambridge admissions interviews is not to find right answers but to evaluate how students reason logically and develop their thoughts on questions without answers. Philosophical and existential topics such as 'how to save humanity from famine' and 'inventing a new musical instrument' are presented as example questions.

『Munhae Naegong』 and 『The Oxbridge Philosophy Class』 complement each other, so reading them in parallel as a set is recommended. Readers may try cross-reading by reading one chapter of 『Munhae Naegong』 and then one chapter of 『The Oxbridge Philosophy Class』, without regard to order.