A learned ignoramus
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- A learned ignoramus
- Language
- English
- Source
- Volume XV (Issue No.1) January 1963
- Year
- 1963
- Subject
- Wit and humor
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- out the next of Khrushchev’s message agreeing to the Pres ident’s terms. At the U N. on Monday morning there was a sense of immense, overwhelming re lief. Ambassador Zorin gave a lunch for members of the Security Council. Stevenson arrived in good humour, and, as a joke, pulled out a newspaper cutting about the Ghanaians asking for wea pons to repel elephants. "I expect they were Am erican elephants,” said Zorin. “No,” said Stevenson, “the elephants wore red.” — A LEARNED IGNORAMUS The specialist “ knows” very well his own, tiny corner of the universe; he is radically ignorant of all the rest. Here we have a precise example of this strange new man ... a human product unparalleled in history. For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his specialty; but neither is he ignorant, because he is a “scientist,” and “knows” very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it im plies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petu lance of one who is learned in his own special line. — Jose Ortega y Gasset. 30 Panorama
- pages
- 30