The range of Knowledge

It’s a problem of our time. The range of human knowledge today is so great that we’re all specialists and the distance between specialisations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.

- Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

For any curious person who values a sense of mastery, this reality can be frustrating. You need to be comfortable with ambiguity and carry a healthy dose of intellectual humility with you if you’re going to navigate a complex world.

I’m reminded of a passage from an essay titled The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy L. Sayers in which she talks about those that can’t stay in their lane and have a lot to say on matters they really have no place speaking on. Of course, she puts it more eloquently:

That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behaviour to which the present climate of opinion is wholly favourable. Bishops air their opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw.

While I think we should all question and challenge things, I don’t think it should be an invitation to then speak with authority or place too much value in our rebuttal because the answers to our questions failed to meet our current level of understanding.

Oftentimes, we get unsatisfactory answers from experts, because complicated issues don’t always have straightforward answers.