Blog Journeys of a Lifelong Learner

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. It permits increased insight. It fosters informed discussion and collaboration. It empowers tremendous advancements. It solves many problems.

For all of its excellence, however, knowledge can also be problematic. It can reveal dearly held notions to be incorrect. It can foster an unwholesome sense of pride and arrogance. It does not automatically lead to appropriate action.

Two Misconceptions of Knowledge

Because knowledge is such an important matter, we tend to have opinions on it. Alas, we can easily adopt one of two opposite and equally erroneous positions:

1. Knowledge is Everything

This is problematic because knowledge is not the same as action. Knowledge in itself does not cause a person to improve. Knowledge does provide the potential for improvement. The value of knowledge is based not so much on its intrinsic quality as it is on the discernment of the one who has it.

2. Knowledge is Irrelevant

Academic disciplines can seem to be abstract and obscure. Many concepts can seem arcane and therefore of limited utility. The problem with presuming knowledge to be useless unless proven otherwise is twofold. First, it fails to take into account that one's competence is the result of the sum total of that person's knowledge and experience. To limit either factor on the basis of present presumptions of future usefulness is highly unwise. Second, it treats knowledge as an undesirable thing. Natural ignorance can be remedied; willful ignorance is inexcusable.

I propose that the question "Will you use what you are learning?" be always replaced with "What are you learning, and how do you plan to enable yourself to use it?"

Two Propositions on Knowledge

The problems of perspectives considering knowledge to be of quintessential importance on the one hand or useless on the other hand must not lead to the abandonment of the topic. Rather, improved presuppositions on knowledge should be embraced:

1. Knowledge is Important, not Ultimate

The complete body of one's knowledge and experience determines one's productivity and accomplishment. To artificially limit one or the other is to suffocate achievement. The ideal end of knowledge is improvement, but some results of knowledge are difficult to ascertain. Scientific research, for example, regularly requires the pursuit of a tremendous amount of theoretical discipline before the realization of tangible results. Learners should not expect knowledge to be ultimate, for it is only a tool for realizing desirable ends.

2. Only Applied Knowledge is True Knowledge

It is easy to presume conceptual mastery of a topic, but one is only able to truly measure one's knowledge of a topic when one is forced to draw upon that knowledge outside of the controlled environment of personal study. An ounce of experience may be worth a pound of theory, but the theory is still necessary. True learners do not limit themselves to a narrow range of topics they assume they will need in the future; they recognize deficiencies and vigorously attack them, perpetually decreasing the level of their monumental incompetence, so that they might be only marginally incompetent rather than grossly incompetent.