Recognition Of One’s Own Ignorance Unlike those who merely...

Recognition Of One’s Own Ignorance Unlike those who merely think they are wise and persons suffering from self-delusion, who only consider their own knowledge and are unaware of their ignorance, that truly wise and those with scientific opinions only consider their own ignorance and in view of its infinits extent do not consider their knowledge to be of any significance.

In ‘Ali’s view, such people are worthy to be called wise and learned and their views and opinions in intellectual problems are likely to be valid and reliable. ‘The truly wise person is he who knows that what he knows, compared with what he does not know, is slight and therefore considers himself ignorant’. The more truly wise person knows the more he realizes that his limited knowledge is insignificant in comparison with the infinite extent of what he does not know.

Thus, a person who has embarked on the quest for scientific facts and opinions will realize that his knowledge is so slight and insignificant when seen against his ignorance that it cannot be taken into account. He therefore not only refuses to consider himself with the little knowledge he does not to be worthy of the little wise and learned, but on a detailed. Scientific and realistic evaluation of the case he numbers himself among the ignorant.

The wiser a person is the greater he feels the gap to be between what he knows and what he does not know. In other words, as the level of his knowledge increases the unknown he encounters increases proportionately. A person who has no proper understanding of human being feels there is nothing he does not know about the subject. If you ask an illiterate person “What is a human being?’ he will reply: ‘That’s easy. A human being is a human being, and really that’s a silly question!

‘And if you ask him if there’s anything he does not know about human beings he will say ‘No, I think it’s quite clear what human beings are, and there’s no need to explain them!’ But if you ask someone, who has studied anthropology, the same question the more extensive or specialized his studies have been the less he will claim to know about this astonishing, complex and mysterious creature. The deeper he dives into the subject the more uncertainties he has about his knowledge.

For ignorant people humans are an open book, but a scientific research such as Professor Carel, who spent a life-time in anthropological research, condensed his knowledge in a book entitled ‘Man, the Unknown’.