Seeking truth rather that loyalty to the group ought to be of prime importance. However for most people, their bread and butter depend on loyalty to the group. Therefore to have seeking truth, individuality, self criticism of one's self and one's group have to come from the group itself--i.e. to be born into a society that stresses individuality is the only way one can come to value truth seeking above all other values.
It must have been some what of a leap of faith for the Rambam to include the importance of Physics and Metaphysics in the Mishna Torah [Laws of Talmud Torah chapter 3] and the Guide [introduction] where as the simple ''peshat'' of the Gemara is to exclude all ''Greek wisdom'' with extreme prejudice. You have to say that seeking of truth was more important to the Rambam that going along with what everyone else was saying. [This approach began with Saadia Gaon and Josef ibn Pakuda author of the Obligations of the Hearts. ][Also see intro to the book Euclid translated to Hebrew by a disciple of the Gra.]
But how to go about this is unclear. On one hand learning fast--saying the words and going on is for me the only way I could get into math and physics at all. But there is also the importance of understanding and review;--and so far I have not really figured out a way for that to work except what I was doing while at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU--reading and saying every word and every page forward and backwards. That certainly helped me getting my A's in the Physics and getting through the Math. But that is slow, and leaves one without the big picture. for a year i have been doing the in depth learning by doing one chap and then review of all previous chapters. then going on to the next chapter and then going back to all previous chapters. But in another period, i just took to doing a chapter in a Joos ''Theoretical Physics'' 40 times. Then at some point i discovered listening to lectures on utube seems to help-- like harpreet bedi on homology, and susskind on physics TO listen to lectures by an expert is the best way of all the above ways of doing in depth learning.
