Primary source vs Secondary source

MayCaesar

Reading the source is desirable, but not always feasible. Often it requires having a lot of background on the subject. For example, reading Einstein's original papers on the ideas of General Relativity is going to be fairly pointless, if you do not have a strong background in mathematics and physics, as you simply will not understand the equations. Similarly, reading books written in old style English without having a strong background in the history of English language will not lead to a lot of comprehension.

The question you should ask yourself is: in what depth do you want to study the subject? If you just want to increase your general knowledge some, then reading secondary sources explaining the subject on the level more understandable to the general public is going to save you a lot of time and effort. On the other hand, if you are very serious about the subject and want to study it in great depth for the next few months, if not years, then you might want to put in some work to get the background necessary for studying the source, otherwise your understanding of the subject will be shallower than you would like.

This is a dilemma we face a lot in mathematics. Whenever I want to explore a new subject, I always have to ask myself, "Is it worth it to start from the very beginning?" It is very hard in mathematics to understand a lot of topics without a lot of preliminary work, but it is not always clear whether a given topic is going to benefit your particular research in any way. I spent a lot of time studying very sophisticated aspects of group theory, only to realise that they are unlikely to ever come up in my work or free time studies.
There are no universal answers here, and you always have to try a lot of things (some of them failing) before you start understanding well what it is you really need to work on, and what can be safely skipped.

piloteer

@대왕광개토

Some philosophy is very difficult to decipher, even for philosophy majors. Heidegger is very difficult to follow. I often read introductory books or essays before I dive right into certain authors books. Not all classic philosophy is difficult though. Notes from the underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is easy to understand, and that book is widely accepted as the first existential book. It is a story rather than a laid out philosophy, but it does shock the reader into being more aware of their surroundings, and how we are a part of nature, and that we waste our lives by being unaware of our surroundings. Doug Erlandson is a philosophy major who teaches philosophy at a community college, so he felt the need to discuss the definitions of the terminology used in philosophy. He has since published his philosophy introductory course into a series of books. He discusses the meanings and the basic premises behind them. You can find them all on kindle, and they're pretty cheap, and they're free with Amazon unlimited. There's no shame in introductory essays or documentaries. The point is to learn the stuff, not worry about how you obtain the information.