Quotes About Knowledge

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of science. —Lord Kelvin (1824–1907),

Myth: When you have a lot of uncertainty, you need a lot of data to tell you something useful. Fact: If you have a lot of uncertainty now, you don't need much data to reduce uncertainty significantly. When you have a lot of certainty already, then you need a lot of data to reduce uncertainty significantly. In other words—if you know almost nothing, almost anything will tell you something.

Instead of being overwhelmed by the apparent uncertainty in such a problem, start to ask what things about it you do know.

The fact is that the preference for ignorance over even marginal reductions in ignorance is never the moral high ground.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. —Aristotle (384 b.c.–322 b.c.)

Any decision we think we are about to make is something that can be Googled before we commit to a choice.

A problem well stated is a problem half solved. —Charles Kettering (1876–1958), American inventor, holder of 300 patents, including electrical ignition for automobiles There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. —Thomas Reid (1710–1769), Scottish philosopher

When presented new information, we have no other option than to relate it to what we already know—there is no blank space in our minds within which new information can be stored so as not to "contaminate" it with existing information. —Clifford Konold, Scientific Reasoning Research Institute, University of Massachusetts

The brain is not a shoebox that 'gets full,' but rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know.

You read widely to be shaped, not so that you might be prepared to regurgitate.

Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks.

The ground for the necessity of Christian schools lies in this very thing, that no fact can be known unless it be known in its relationship to God. And once this point is clearly seen, the doubt as to the value of teaching arithmetic in Christian schools falls out of the picture. Of course arithmetic must be taught in a Christian school. It cannot be taught anywhere else.

We test students right after they read something mostly to ensure that they have in fact read it. From this, many have drawn the erroneous conclusion that the only good that can be extracted from their reading is that which can be displayed on or measured by a test. This is wildly inaccurate. Most of the good your reading and education has done for you is not something you can recall at all.

Information can get from a professors lecture notes and into a student's notebook without passing through the mind of either.

Disagreements about things like the necessity of Christian education are actually disagreements about the nature of knowledge, the meaning of common grace, the authority of natural revelation, and the possibility of neutrality in education.

You read widely to be shaped, not so that you might be prepared to regurgitate. TAKEAWAY

The brain is not a shoebox that "gets full," but is rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know.

As Mark Twain supposedly said, a classic is a book that nobody wants to read but everybody wants to have read.

he hardly knew any facts and was thus having trouble sticking to them.

One writer has helpfully noted that education is about formation, not so much information.

The writer must know something about the world outside books—whether his or the books of the others. At the same time, he must also be thoroughly acquainted with the world inside books. Words on a page are part of real life. They cannot be substituted for the whole, but they cannot be taken from it either.

We live in a narcissistic age, which means that many want to have the praise that comes from having read, without the antecedent labor of actually reading.

Read because you want to, not because you need to. Actually, you need to as well, but you need to want to. You also need to want to need to, but I am rapidly getting out of my depth.

your readings are the trees where your fallen leaves would come from. Mind mulch. Cognitive compost.