I am in love with knowledge. When you stop learning, your life is over. Your mind is not like a glass; there is no ‘full’. My mind, like a sponge (albeit slightly leaker than a few years ago,) will absorb the majority of what it comes into contact with.
Knowledge is a powerful drug. Once you have had a taste of what it can do, you’d better get comfortable because you’re in for the ride, mate! Learning one thing prompts a whole raft of questions which you then have to try to find answers to, and the whole thing just snowballs. The quest for knowledge becomes part of you.
Simplistically, this divides us up into two basic types of person. The Surfer and the Scientist.
The Surfer finds an interesting fact and like most of us, asks himself a number of questions. He picks the most interesting one and follows it. *click*. The answer he gets prompts a few more questions, he looks at the shiniest one and follows that. *click*. Eventually, he gets bored, runs out of coffee and goes to bed easily satisfied.
The Scientist is different. As before, from his interesting nugget, he comes up with a number of questions. He realises just how complex this can be and sets to following ALL of these leads properly. *click* *click* *click*. When happy with this, he will pick the relevant ones and investigate these thoroughly too. *click* *click* *click* He never gets bored, but some time the following day will collapse from a caffeine overdose and sleep for 24hrs solid.
If you decide that you are a Scientist, you are condemning yourself to a life of little sleep and lots of commitment. But you’ll possess the true satisfaction of someone who knows that knowledge is a worthy goal, and that the journey to find it offers some spectacular sights.
Where did all this come from? I came across a quotation from Alexander Pope and ended up reading most of his Essay on Criticism. (I say most – it got a little dry in parts so I skimmed a little!) The first paragraph of this excerpt you might be familiar with.
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A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir’d at first Sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Arts,
While from the bounded Level of our Mind,
Short Views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc’d, behold with strange Surprize
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise!
So pleas’d at first, the towring Alps we try,
Mount o’er the Vales, and seem to tread the Sky;
Th’ Eternal Snows appear already past,
And the first Clouds and Mountains seem the last:
But those attain’d, we tremble to survey
The growing Labours of the lengthen’d Way,
Th’ increasing Prospect tires our wandering Eyes,
Hills peep o’er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
