Ming Fung: - Knowers and Knowing

'The more you know the less you understand.' (Tao Le Ching)

The first thing that comes to my mind is that, knowledge does not seem to have an end. We never get to a point where we know everything and we can stop learning and knowing. The main message of this quote is that the more you know you come to realize the fact that how little you actually understand. Or another way to interpret it is how people have a large bank of knowledge, but not necessary going in depth in each thing. That depth is the understanding.

This is very true, as said before, learning and knowing is endless. As we proceed and accumulate more knowledge, we realize that we actually had been really stupid in the past. In my opinion, this has always happened to me. Especially when I was smaller I tend to wonder how things work. Then now when I think back now, things seem to work out more easily than before. This maybe because, I’m smarter, I have more knowledge, I am better as a knower.

The “West Wing” video I watched last lesson also showed how this quote is true. The person was given a map with a different and said to be more accurate world map. She was shocked, because it was not like what she had seen before in her life. She had just experienced gaining new knowledge, which is different to what she was always told. Here we can see she understands how little she understands and she started denying that it was the correct world map. In my world map, I could not recall the sizes and approximate shapes of the continents, but just the vague places of each chunk of land. I thought I knew the world map, but in fact I did not understand it. I think knowing, and understanding are different levels of “knowing”. You may know a person, but not understand him or her well. It is like having a large horizon, or picture. But in contrast, each object on the picture maybe small, not detailed.

The reason why you understand less when you know more, is because you know more, you have a big perspective of what is happening. However, you are lacking understanding of the depth in that knowledge, as there is more knowledge, more understandings would be needed. Knowing and understanding are positively correlated.