The Thinker's Forum

Questioning the Self-Evident

Some people adopt ideas. Others construct them.

I can recall, even as a child, feeling a quiet dissonance between what seemed logical to me and what the adults around me believed. Not that I was actively challenging their assumptions—only that something about the way they thought felt incomplete. I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but I sensed gaps in their reasoning, contradictions in their convictions.

The first book that nudged open the door was Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody. I was twelve. The adults around me were abuzz with it for a moment—then quickly put it away. I did the opposite. I read it. The book chronicled near-death experiences, stories that defied the dogmatic materialism that was so often presented as the only rational view of reality. It left an imprint.

Years later, when confronted with strict realism—the belief that only what is measurable is real—I found myself unable to dismiss what I had already encountered: unexplained metaphysical phenomena, the teachings of figures like Siddhartha Gautama, and the lingering paradoxes in physics itself. It seemed to me that truth must lie beyond the pendulum swings of history—beyond the cycles where one era embraces mysticism, only to be replaced by an era of hard rationalism, only to later give way once more.

Where did this leave us? The 20th century saw the triumph of science, yet at its core, modern physics had introduced more uncertainty than ever before. The debate between Niels Bohr and Einstein—whether reality was fundamentally probabilistic or if there was an underlying order we had yet to uncover—remained unresolved. The same scientific method that was supposed to settle truth had, at its edges, revealed mysteries that could not be so easily reduced to equations.

Beyond the Pendulum: A Framework for Thinking Past Impasses

To break free of cycles, one must first recognize them.

I will not discuss here where my reasoning has led me—offering a Copernican shift in perspective rarely leads to immediate acceptance. However, I will share the framework I use when approaching deep questions—one that has proven effective at revealing overlooked truths.

✔ Natural laws are simple once understood. Even in the most intricate systems, the underlying principles tend to be elegant. Complexity arises from interactions, but the rules themselves are often straightforward.

✔ If a mystery persists, the answer is likely hiding in plain sight. History has repeatedly shown that breakthroughs occur not by discovering something new, but by questioning something assumed. The greatest intellectual traps are often found in the self-evident.

✔ Any impasse signals a hidden assumption. When thinkers as brilliant as Einstein and Bohr failed to reach a conclusion, it suggests that something fundamental was being taken for granted on one or both sides of the debate.

Throughout history, progress has come not from reinforcing existing paradigms but from recognizing where even the greatest minds overlooked the obvious.

In that spirit, The Thinker’s Forum is not here to provide final answers. It exists to invite the asking of the right questions—the ones that lead beyond the pendulum.