For a real scientific it is not just man that is unknown...

For a real scientific it is not just man that is unknown every single creature and every single atom in the universe is complex, mysterious and unknown. A French scientific named Pilisti De Lamene is reported to have said: ‘If anyone can defined a grain of sand I will show him the Almighty.’ And it is not just a grain of sand but the atoms that it is composed of still remain to be properly defined. For does not science every day discover new mysterious about the atom?

And does not this indicate that science is still in capable of fully understanding a particle of particles of the universe? For the really wise person, as opposed to the person who thinks he is wise, the whole universe is therefore mysterious and complex and unknown, and the more he learns about it the more mysteries and complexities he becomes aware of, and hence the greater the number of question marks he is confronted with in his studies and the more aware he is of his own ignorance.

For this reason the greater a person's knowledge the less he finds that he knows! His knowledge is limited, but his ignorance is infinite. No number can quantify the gap, so, Imam 'Ali says the really wise person considers his knowledge to be so slight and insignificant that it is not worthy of consideration and therefore he numbers himself among the ignorant.

And this explains the meaning of the words ascribed to Socrates: ‘My knowledge has reached the point that I know I know nothing.’ In similar vein Avicenna describes his own intellectual achievements in the following verse: ‘Always asking and asking, but answer came there none splitting many a hair, but without knowing one.' The fact that a truly learned person considers himself relatively speaking, ignorant is not confined to the likes of Socrates and Avicenna but as Imam 'Ali states this is one of the unconditional characteristics of the truly learned.

Such persons are not exceptions: true learning means simply that. We should note what the Imam says about his knowledge and then in comparing it with his ignorance.