The only thing I am sure of…
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2025 6:22 am
Hello dear friends and welcome to this new episode of Walk with Johan. It is a great pleasure to have you with me today for this new episode which will be, as you will see, a call to humility. So, humility is the opposite… it is being humble, eh. To have humility is to be humble, it is the opposite of being pretentious and feeling superior to others.
The idea for this episode came to me after talking to a friend from the Académie Français Authentique , who I won't name, but who will recognize herself. So, hello to you, dear friend. We talked a little bit about knowledge, about learning, and we both said to each other that... or in fact, we remembered a quote that we both knew and which is at the heart, at the basis of what I would like to share with you today, and which is: "The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing." So, I repeat the quote: "The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing."
So, this quote, it is very very well known, very famous, it is attributed to Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, and it sums up part of his philosophical thought, we even gave it a name, it is "Socratic ignorance", what we called "Socratic ignorance". So, in summary, the more we know, the less we know. It's a bit... it seems israel whatsapp number data paradoxical, it seems strange, but the more knowledge we have... in fact, the more we know, the more knowledge we have, the more we realize the extent of what we ignore, because what we ignore, by definition, we do not know. What we ignore, we do not know and what we do not know, well we do not know that we do not know, quite simply.
So, that's exactly what is meant by this sentence, 'end, or by this summary that I made of the quote, the more we know, the less we know, the more knowledge we have, the more we realize the extent of what we don't know. And suddenly, it's a call to intellectual humility because we recognize that it's impossible for us to know everything in fact, we recognize that it's impossible to completely understand the world in which we live, to completely understand the universe, to completely understand all the things that happen, etc.
There is another quote that I really like, I will try to give you off the top of my head that I did not write down but that has always struck me and interested me, it is by John Archibald Wheeler, who was, I think, an American physicist, if I am not mistaken, it would be necessary to check, but in fact he said… it is a paraphrase, so, it is probably not the exact words, but you will get the idea. In fact, he said: "We live on an island surrounded by ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so grows the shore of our ignorance."
So, in fact, he takes… I have probably already quoted this very nice and very clear and very simple little text. In fact, what he says, quite simply, is that… 'well, he takes an image, he says that all we know is an island. So, when we have a small island, well… and this island, it is surrounded in fact by water and the water is what we do not know. So, when we have a small island, the shore… The shore is the outline of the island. A small island, it has a small shore. And the shore is what is in contact between what we know and what we do not know, what we do not know. And so, when we have a small island, when we know little, we have a small shore, so, there is… we do not know much or in any case we are aware of not knowing much. On the other hand, when our island grows, well the shore, this area in contact between our ignorance and what we know, well that grows too. So, suddenly, the more our island grows, the more we learn things, the more we realize that there are lots of things we don't know, that's it.
So, it's a bit of a figurative way of saying what Socrates said, he summed up in Socratic ignorance, and I think it's a very beautiful image, a very beautiful metaphor for that. So, we must not fall into the trap of believing that because we have more than others or because we have more experience than others, we are better, we must remain humble, because in fact we know very, very little. Tell yourself that knowledge is infinite, there is an infinity of things to know. So, knowledge is infinite.
So, between the one who knows little and the one who knows a lot, well the gap is not very big in fact. The gap is not very big because we compare something finite to something infinite. So, suddenly, finally, between the one who knows little and the one who knows a lot, well the gap is not huge compared to infinity.
The idea for this episode came to me after talking to a friend from the Académie Français Authentique , who I won't name, but who will recognize herself. So, hello to you, dear friend. We talked a little bit about knowledge, about learning, and we both said to each other that... or in fact, we remembered a quote that we both knew and which is at the heart, at the basis of what I would like to share with you today, and which is: "The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing." So, I repeat the quote: "The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing."
So, this quote, it is very very well known, very famous, it is attributed to Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, and it sums up part of his philosophical thought, we even gave it a name, it is "Socratic ignorance", what we called "Socratic ignorance". So, in summary, the more we know, the less we know. It's a bit... it seems israel whatsapp number data paradoxical, it seems strange, but the more knowledge we have... in fact, the more we know, the more knowledge we have, the more we realize the extent of what we ignore, because what we ignore, by definition, we do not know. What we ignore, we do not know and what we do not know, well we do not know that we do not know, quite simply.
So, that's exactly what is meant by this sentence, 'end, or by this summary that I made of the quote, the more we know, the less we know, the more knowledge we have, the more we realize the extent of what we don't know. And suddenly, it's a call to intellectual humility because we recognize that it's impossible for us to know everything in fact, we recognize that it's impossible to completely understand the world in which we live, to completely understand the universe, to completely understand all the things that happen, etc.
There is another quote that I really like, I will try to give you off the top of my head that I did not write down but that has always struck me and interested me, it is by John Archibald Wheeler, who was, I think, an American physicist, if I am not mistaken, it would be necessary to check, but in fact he said… it is a paraphrase, so, it is probably not the exact words, but you will get the idea. In fact, he said: "We live on an island surrounded by ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so grows the shore of our ignorance."
So, in fact, he takes… I have probably already quoted this very nice and very clear and very simple little text. In fact, what he says, quite simply, is that… 'well, he takes an image, he says that all we know is an island. So, when we have a small island, well… and this island, it is surrounded in fact by water and the water is what we do not know. So, when we have a small island, the shore… The shore is the outline of the island. A small island, it has a small shore. And the shore is what is in contact between what we know and what we do not know, what we do not know. And so, when we have a small island, when we know little, we have a small shore, so, there is… we do not know much or in any case we are aware of not knowing much. On the other hand, when our island grows, well the shore, this area in contact between our ignorance and what we know, well that grows too. So, suddenly, the more our island grows, the more we learn things, the more we realize that there are lots of things we don't know, that's it.
So, it's a bit of a figurative way of saying what Socrates said, he summed up in Socratic ignorance, and I think it's a very beautiful image, a very beautiful metaphor for that. So, we must not fall into the trap of believing that because we have more than others or because we have more experience than others, we are better, we must remain humble, because in fact we know very, very little. Tell yourself that knowledge is infinite, there is an infinity of things to know. So, knowledge is infinite.
So, between the one who knows little and the one who knows a lot, well the gap is not very big in fact. The gap is not very big because we compare something finite to something infinite. So, suddenly, finally, between the one who knows little and the one who knows a lot, well the gap is not huge compared to infinity.