The title of this blog “Feeding My Ignorance” is derived from the Terry Pratchett quote that appears at the top of the Wiki page. This allied to the Einstein quote on the this page illustrates that my take on ignorance is not a negative one – and that the fact that my ‘perceived’ ignorance is increasing is actually a very positive (if paradoxical) sign of increased knowledge.
Two related incidents over the last few days have – once again – driven home both the sentiment and the reality of this.
I found myself wandering round the university town of Oxford and – as part of that wander – we went into Blackwell’s bookshop on Broad Street. Opened on 1st January 1879 from the outside it looks like just another little shop – however – in common with seemingly a large number of buildings in the centre of Oxford it goes both up and down from street level.
This results in a sort of TARDIS-like effect when the only appropriate response is “its bigger on the inside”! If you are interested there is an exceedingly comprehensive online tour of the shop here.
Anyone reading what I write here cannot help but realise that various areas associated with cognition are very much of interest to me. Philosophy, Psychology, the Mind and other associated subjects are areas of any book store that draw my attention. This resulted in me heading for the very bottom of the Norrington Room – the bottom of the shop – where I perused a number of books that caught my eye.
Given the subject matter – I was immediately struck by the philosophical question raised by the fact that there were four shelves which contained copies of the recommended book of the week (or perhaps month, can’t remember) plus the 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest selling books in the subject area. What struck me as apt was not that the shelves existed, but that they seemed (rather incongruously) to have sold out of the 3rd best seller!!
Couldn’t help wondering if it would become No.1 next week (and if so, would it still be an empty shelf?). So many questions…..
Anyway – getting back to the point – having realised that I had read just a few of the books that filled the shelves around that part of the bookshop I was (to quote Pratchett once more) “struck by my tremendous sense of my own ignorance” – there was so much still to read – and – wait a minute – what about the thousands of books that I had walked past in order to get to this part of the bookshop – how few have I actually read.
It reminded me a bit of seeing the “hundred must read books” on a website. If I remember correctly I had read less than half – but more than the ‘average’. However, whilst I have a reasonable record when it comes to having read the “classics” I realise that in comparison to the huge number of books in that bookshop my “read” list is tiny – therefore my ignorance is huge!!
The other reminder of my ignorance was on a completely different topic – the incidence of mental health issues amongst the population. I was surprised to read that 1 in 100 people suffer from schizophrenia – then, on researching the validity of that statistic I was gobsmacked to discover that around 23% of the population of the UK will suffer some form of mental illness in their lifetime.
Wow!!!
No wonder there are so many references to these insidious diseases now that the taboo on talking openly about them seems to have dissipated quite a lot.
So – I am reminded once more – well twice more – just how great my ignorance is – and I know that every morsel of knowledge that I consume will result in another huge lump of ignorance being added to the pile. By some measures “knowledge” is multiplying orders of magnitude faster than i was just a few years ago. There is no way that anyone can possibly keep up – and so – the ignorance mountain will continue to rise up far faster than the knowledge mole-hill.
All I can do is concentrate on ensuring that the mole-hill doesn’t collapse in on itself!!