Reverse Thinking

It is a story about a first year student who studied Philosophy in the University. He studied many different philosophies such as existentialism, structuralism, mentalism, dialectics etc, etc.

The year end final examination was coming. In the last lesson before examination, the professor said he would set a question that would cover all that the students had learnt during the whole year. The students went back and studied hard on all the theories they learnt during the year.

Eventually, the big day came. When the students received the examination paper, to their surprise, the question paper was printed with only one question - “WHY?” and there was a 100 pages answer book ready for each student. Most of students did not know how to answer the question.

After a week, the result of the examination came out. There was only one student get full mark. The professor explained to all his students: If they wanted to get full mark for this question, one way was to put down everything they leant this year about philosophy. That is almost impossible for a student to write down that much within 3 hours in the examination.

The other way to get full mark is: to put down the question or the answer “Why Not?”