The quest for knowledge is never ending, and an endless curiosity to learn more is a wonderful quality to possess.


And a quality that I hope is infectious, and spreads wide and far, cause some folks need to learn like…a lot more.

To that point, today’s words of wisdom are “the island of knowledge”, which is a fun little metaphor that helps engender some humility in the aspiring minds, ceaseless thinkers, and philosophers in the making the world over. The Island of Knowledge (I.o.K) is, unlike a lot of philosophy here on Active Time Event, a fun little metaphor, and helps to detail an underlying truth about reality, that lends itself to the notion that we can know a lot, but we can never know everything…but that shouldn’t stop us from learning as much as we can.

The I.o.K metaphor is a simple one, and is a concept that puts forth ta simple but radical idea, which goes something like this; imagine that what we know, all of our collected knowledge, whether it be humanity in its totality, or just the individual themselves, represents a land mass, in this instance, an island. As we learn more, our island will continue to grow, the information we gather represents an always bigger, growing land mass. However, as our island grows, so does the shores of our ignorance-the boundary between the known and unknown actually grows along with the island…no matter how much knowledge we gain, our shores of ignorance grow commensurately along with it…the shores, just like the island, are infinite in scope….cause we can never know all there is to know. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask.

The metaphor involving the Island of Knowledge is an excellent breath of fresh air; a keen reminder that no matter how much progress we make in our quest to learn everything we can about the universe, there is always that much more to learn: it is endless. This humbling acknowledgement is a great representation of science, as we stand in awe of the infinite, realizing that we should never give up in being curious, as there is, and will always remain, an endless amount of data to acquire. These moments help ground us in the face of the cosmic infinite, and helps to frame our positions in such a vast eternity of existence, allowing us to gain valuable perspective of just how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. As Carl Sagan pointed out, astronomy is a character building pursuit, and that notion lends itself ideally, in helping to formulate what the Island of Knowledge is all about, and how we, as the cosmically curious, will always live upon it.

As always, take care of yourself, and others.

~Pashford