There can sometimes be a tendency to dismiss ‘book learning’ as something somehow undignified and inferior. Sometimes the message seems to be this: throw out your books, burn down the libraries, empty your head and just sit in silent meditation!
But this seems to me to be a shame, if only because it cuts us off from so many rich sources of knowledge about the world and about ourselves, from so many fresh perspectives, from so many thoughts that we don’t yet know how to think, from so many questions we have not yet begun to ask, from so many paths that might lead us into seeing afresh the sheer poetry of the world.
The idea that we have to choose – either sit in silent meditation or labour over dry and arid tomes – is, I think, mistaken because our minds are not organs dedicated to performing only one particular task. There are different ways of thinking, and different ways of using the mind. Aristotle knew this, back in the day, when he saw that there was a difference between theoretical knowledge, practical wisdom, and that tricky-to-translate term poiesis – the kind of activity brings things forth things like books, perhaps, or blog posts, or even cakes.
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