When Knowledge Isn't Enough

Looking to make a change? Remember: transformation happens experientially, not intellectually.

We often receive instruction and agree, “I see what you're saying,” but seldom do we actually do the thing we learned. We just agree with it in our minds.

This is a problem.

Daniel J. Boorstin said, “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Boorstin's statement becomes particularly poignant when you learn that he graduated with highest honors from Harvard, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and earned his PhD at Yale. By occupation he was a lawyer, a university professor and the U.S. Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987. Yet Boorstin warned us that the illusion of knowledge was the greatest impediment to discovery.

Are you willing to go exploring with Boorstin and Dewar and Michener and me? Tommy Dewar said, “Exploration makes one wiser; even if the only wisdom gained is to know where not to return.”

James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his book, Tales of the South Pacific. He went on to earn more than one hundred million dollars as the author of more than 40 novels.

In his memoirs – published just a year before he died at the age of 90 – Michener wrote, “I feel almost a blood relationship with all the artists in all the mediums, for I find that we face the same problems but solve them in our own ways. When young people in my writing classes, for example, ask what subjects they should study to become writers, I surprise them by replying: ‘Ceramics and eurhythmic dancing.' When they look surprised I explain: ‘Ceramics so you can feel form evolving through your fingertips molding the moist clay, and eurhythmic dancing so you can experience the flow of motion through your body. You might develop a sense of freedom that way.'” – This Noble Land, chap.10

Michener, a novelist to whose success George Washington testified one hundred million times, instructed thousands of aspiring young writers during his years at the University of Texas and he gave each student the same advice. But do you suppose any of them actually took classes in ceramics and eurhythmic dancing?

I doubt it.

Would you have done what Michener said? Or would you have thought, “I get it,” and then walked on to seek advice from other experts?

Would you have allowed the illusion of knowledge to rob you of the joy of discovery?

Roy H. Williams