04 January 2020

Information is not knowledge, not even nearly; and knowledge is certainly not wisdom. I learnt this when I was about 8 or 9. We were doing fractions at school. The teacher had taken us through the concepts and techniques, and then had told us to do the problems at the end of the chapter in our little textbook. Being keen and smart I finished in no time so had a spare 20 minutes before the class ended. I decided to read the next chapter. I don't remember what it was about but I remember it appearing beautifully clear and clean, so when I finished I decided to attempt the problems at the end of that chapter, and was dismayed to find that I didn't even know how to start. Having the information fresh in my head didn't seem to help at all because I didn't know how to apply it. Then later, studying engineering at university, I realised that being able to do the problems I was set by the teachers was very different from using my mathematical knowledge to solve real life problems in the laboratory and then later in the processing plant, where nothing behaves ideally. That required an even deeper understanding, akin to wisdom.

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