How To Think Like Aristotle And Elon Musk
Examining your life with first principles.
I think it’s fair to say that Elon Musk is one of a kind. What else can you call someone who sells flame throwers, creates underground highways, builds his own rockets to go to Mars, and creates an electric car that doesn’t resemble a golf cart?
While he may be unique, his style of thinking is not. In fact, it’s quite ancient.
Musk is a huge proponent of “first principles” thinking. This is the mental thought process created by Aristotle and shared in his book “Metaphysics” in the first century BC. The philosopher describes the principle as “the first basis from which a thing is known”.
When you use this principle, you cut away the non-essential. Doing so gives you the building blocks necessary for developing a new idea. Musk explains how this line of thinking helped create his company SpaceX.
As Ozan Varol in his book “Think Like A Rocket Scientist” recounts, Musk would originally try and purchase existing rockets and soon find they were prohibitively expensive. This wouldn’t stop him though; he’d apply first principles in search of an answer.
What is a rocket? It’s mainly aluminum, other light alloys, and engines. Musk checked the price of these components and found they…
