Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
— Thomas H. HuxleyAs many other things do, this takes me back to Chicago. But it takes me way back; all the way back to my very first day on Campus, September 12, 1999.
There is a quote on the Social Sciences Research Building, over a window facing 59th Street. It is a paraphrase of Kelvin’s “When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.” I remember thinking “wow.” It is to date the most moving thing I have ever read. It made me realize I was in the right place, because that’s how I had felt my whole life.
Some may think it is just another way of stating Confucius’ “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance,” but it is so much more. It is a challenge, a motivator, to attain the ultimate piece of knowledge [if there is such a thing], the extent of one’s own personal, intangible library.
And why not take that challenge, after all, it’s the only thing you can take with you.