The title of the first principle comes from the religious word " first driving force ". The first driving force was founded by Newton , because Newton's first law shows that matter remains stationary or moves at a constant speed in a straight line without being affected by external forces. If everything should be still at the beginning of the universe, but later it was moving, how did it move? Newton believed it was because God pushed him. In other words, many things that cannot be explained are attributed to the "first driving force" of the universe.
What is the first principle? Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said: "In every system, there are first principles. The first principles are basic propositions and assumptions. They cannot be omitted, deleted, and violated." There are three keywords here. The first is basic propositions and assumptions, the second is that they cannot be omitted and deleted, and the third is that they cannot be violated, that is, the most basic thing. This is the philosophical concept of the first principle. So how to apply the first principle thinking?
Musk gave an example. When Musk was developing the electric car , the high battery cost was a key issue. At that time, the price of energy storage batteries was US$600 per kilowatt hour, and the price of an 85-kilowatt battery exceeded US$50,000. At that time, most people believed that the cost of batteries could not be reduced too much. Next, Musk further split the problem and what material is the composition of the battery? After splitting, Musk found that the battery composition consists of some polymers of carbon, nickel, and aluminum. Finally, he found that if you buy these raw materials from London Metal Exchange , the battery cost only $80 per kilowatt-hour, which is an order of magnitude less than the $600 on the market. Musk discovered the basic facts and essence of the problem, so we can start to solve it next. Musk did not buy ready-made batteries to modify. Instead, we analyzed its components and adopted new battery arrangement technology. After many experiments, the battery cost was eventually greatly reduced, which made today's Tesla .
It is very important for us to use the first principles instead of comparative thinking to think about problems. We always tend to compare things in life, and we do everything others have done or are doing. The result of this development can only produce small iterative development. The first principle's way of thinking is to look at the world from a physical perspective, that is, to clear the appearance of things layer by layer, see the essence inside, and then move up from the essence layer by layer. Everyone should have a certain understanding of the explanation of the first principle on
. So what is the relationship between it and dialectics? In dialectics, it emphasizes that the development of things is mainly determined by the internal factors of things, while the external factors, that is, external environmental factors are just an auxiliary function. This has something in common with the first principle. Both emphasize that the development of things is determined by the essence of things. dialectics proposes that the internal factors of things determine the development of things, and also emphasizes the consideration of secondary contradictions such as external factors. The first principle is to focus on the essence of things. After finding the essence of things, based on the essence, split the essence, and then recombining the essence, which is actually inseparable from the category of dialectics . Take Musk's electric car as an example. Musk wants to reduce the cost of electric cars. He found that the most important thing that affects the cost is the battery. This is the main contradiction that affects the price, and this is the internal factor of electric cars. After disassembling the battery, it was found that it was mainly a combination of ordinary polymer materials, which affected the essence of the battery. Musk took the essence of the material combination as the first principle, reinnovated the combination method, constantly searched for new and cheap combination methods, and made cheap electric vehicle batteries.
So it is the battery that affects the cost of electric vehicles. The main method of affecting the cost of battery is the combination of materials. The material combination of batteries is the main aspect of the main contradiction and the essence of the battery price.After finding the main aspects of the main contradiction and finding the essence, use the combination of battery materials as the first principle to find a simpler and cheaper and more effective way to combine batteries. How to combine battery materials requires continuous practice, so the first principle is actually not that profound. The method is to find the essence that affects the development of things, take essence as the first principle, split the most basic things in the essence, then recombinate them, and propose various different solutions, just like finding contradictions, analyzing contradictions, and resolving contradictions in dialectics, but the first principle seems to be more specific.
