“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
I know what an Higg’s particle is. I have done some elementary reading on it. I have watched Brian Cox’s presentation on the LHC at TED. I have read the SCIAM article “The Coming Revolutions in Particle Physics”. I know enough about the Higg’s particle to sound learned and impressive at the lunch table. Maybe even to the extent of being able to regurgitate a bit at a barcamp.
But will it be ever the same as getting down to the bowels of quantum mechanics and arriving at the particle mathematically? Will it ever equal at arriving at the big equation of everything and finding that you will have to introduce the big ‘H’ to make it work? Sometime this year, I got a piece of good advice: “Don’t be a quizzer”. Being a avid quizzer myself, I know exactly what the person was talking about. Quizzers know a lot of stuff – history, geography, economics, current affairs, arts, the sciences – and most of it is superficial, or should I say “partial”.
I am not a quantum physicist or even a physicist. Maybe I need not know more than what I know currently about the Higg’s particle. Neither does a zoologist need to know about “the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization” nor does a historian need to know about “advanced Fourier series” or “organic chemistry”. But in this day and age of Wikipedia and Google, does a “zoologist” even need to know his Chordata from his Annelida?
Being a polymath is different from being continuous partial. A polymath has in-depth knowledge of more than one field. A “continuous partial” has superficial knowledge in one too many fields. It is also a different matter to try out one’s hand at different fields to fall in love and become an expert in one of them. A “continuous partial” does not fall in love but rather continues to acquire partial knowledge throughout his lifetime. The entire idea is beautifully summed up in the statement by Richard Feynman which appears at the beginning of this blog.
So, is being “continuous partial” when it comes to knowledge, good or bad? The jury is still out on this one!
