“A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing”
----- Alexander Pope.
Knowledge is the biggest asset of mankind and that is why it is considered to be the most essential component in our life, all the religions have do focused and emphasized on the importance and significance of the acquiring of knowledge. Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something such as facts, information, descriptions or skills which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering or learning and referred to a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. As famous philosopher Plato defined knowledge as “justified true belief”.Knowledge is the most powerful weapon that can be used to change the world. It is quite impossible for human being to achieve such a level without knowledge.
In most of the cases, it is not possible to understand an information or domain exhaustively; so our knowledge is always incomplete or partial. But one thing that many people overlook that incomplete and little knowledge can be a dangerous thing; not only for an individual but even for the whole mankind creating problems and devastating impacts on the people of world. A person with little knowledge can not only create havoc to his life but also to the environment. Such little learning leads a man to become an arrogant; it leads one to the illusion of knowledge. So what is illusion of knowledge and how is it dangerous? Illusion of knowledge is nothing but one’s faulty, subjective, unscientific, vague, unproven and dubious assumption about a thing or information. It is said that the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge. Two great men are credited to have said this famous aphorism. Daniel J. Boorstin and Stephen Hawking cited this to aware mankind about the flaw of the illusion of knowledge. Actually knowledge becomes an illusion when an inferior answer becomes permanent knowledge. The illusion of knowledge is somewhat more dangerous than ignorance; it is not only the greatest enemy of knowledge but also for the whole mankind. Suppose you go to an ignorant alcoholic person and told him about the evils of alcohol consumption, he will simply said “I don’t care” and will walk away. But if you approach to an alcoholic person with illusion of knowledge and told him the same; you will get a reply like “don’t believe those science books; they trick everybody. If alcohol was bad for us then God would have told us in the new testament.” So clearly it may provoke anyone to become an alcoholic. Let’s take an example where in a class of many students a teacher taught something very interesting and important topic and after that she asked whether they all got the point or not. Then the ignorant will say nothing or no whereas some students will just say yes blindly because of fear of being judged and to show that they are intelligent which also can be called as illusion of knowledge.
Ignorance is simply the lack of knowledge. The illusion of knowledge is less lack and more of a replacement of knowledge. An ignorant person can be given education, he can be taught. But an arrogant person is much harder to deal with; he can’t be educated as he always pretends to know everything. He refuses to be given knowledge; he refuses to question or judge himself and his beliefs because he thinks that he is right all the time. There is a saying “you can wake a person who is sleeping but you can’t wake a person who pretend to be sleeping”. Illusion of knowledge is something that stops you from learning the truth that accepts false statement s as the ultimate truth. It will always keep you away from the real truth as you will think you already had it and hence will resist you from acquiring the real knowledge. Without proper and complete knowledge one may cause great harm to himself and to the society as well. One of the biggest examples in this scenario is the terrorism, the religious extremist people trains the youth in such a manner that don’t get the proper knowledge and use them as a robot that had incomplete and little knowledge. The suicide bombers have been mind washed in such a manner with illusion of knowledge that they agree to either take the lives of other or even give their own lives. It is very common aspect that one’s knowledge can be very much useful and productive but in such scenario the illusion of knowledge can be deadly and hazardous too.
Actually all human beings suffer from this flaw of illusion of knowledge in more or less quantity, even some great personalities who are role models of mankind like Dickens, Addison, Einstein also faced such problems of illusion of knowledge. To achieve a perfect success it is very necessary to get rid of this flaw as it carries lots of problem along with it. To overcome such flaw one must see the things in their totality; one must go through minute analysis; one must be able to judge themselves. One may be a teacher, a doctor, a scientist, a cop or a cab driver but they must remember that illusion of knowledge about their respective fields can create problems, difficulties and inconvenience to others. It is unquestionably true that the illusion of knowledge is the greatest enemy of knowledge and always stands as an obstacle. It is obvious that illusion of knowledge is the greatest enemy of knowledge; not ignorance.
