In my last post, I mentioned English novelist Samuel Butler (1835 – 1902), who reportedly wrote, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” That being said, I could be wrong.

 

I confess to being unable thus far to find in which of his works Butler write those words. Without such confirmation, I have to rely on a variety of web sources that may be incorrect. How can I know if some quotation sites copied that quote mistakenly from another site? Butler was also a satirist and in 1851 noted that, “The most important service rendered by the press and magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust”. You needn’t speculate long on what he would have thought of unsourced web sites.

 

Often cited as the first person to publish the phrase that “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) actually wrote that “A little learning is a dang’rous thing;”, in his poem An Essay on Criticism (1711). History, then, shows that minor errors and retelling of the errors is nothing new. Nevertheless, the point holds true, and should make us all a little more careful about what we know or, more to the point, what we believe we know.

 

Writing about scientists in his notebooks, Butler observed that “There are two classes, those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing”. I disagree with him on that point. Butler was a classically educated thinker whose works included translations of Greek classics The Iliad and Odyssey, both attributed to Homer. In the social circles within Victorian England in which Butler lived, it may have been unfashionable to neither know nor care to know but it has been all the rage for decades in many places, England included. In many social circles, the only known Homer is a cartoon character. This isn’t to say the Simpsons have no place in modern society or thought. I suspect that the more you know the funnier that show and Seth MacFarlane’s cartoons and many others are. After all, actor James Woods lends his voice and character to The Family Guy and he is scary smart in real life.

 

I don’t believe television and movies necessarily rot brains. I first heard of Alexander Pope while watching the movie The DaVinci Code, based on Dan Brown’s novel of the same name, which I hadn’t read yet. Pope was referred to as the man who presided over the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton. While untrue in real life, Pope did eulogize him in what became famous verse. Brown’s historically fictional book and film sparked my interest enough to spend a few minutes searching the web when Pope’s name emerged concerning Butler’s quote. Such is the nature of curiosity, if we don’t stifle it.

 

Despite how silly some uses of android and smart phones are, they allow us to search all sorts of topics the moment they occur to us. When I see a news headline and want to know more about it, I often Google it on my phone rather than wait through weather, advertisements and the like for that story to come up on the news broadcast. Maybe that’s just me.

 

So whether reading famous works or watching cartoons, curiosity is a good thing, maybe not for cats but for most people. Being unsure of what we think we know, and being curious enough to check some facts, could help us when grocery shopping, voting, watching the evening news, and a host of other scenarios. Of course, what do I know? Evidently, not as much as I previously thought. How about you?