The Pleasure of Finding Things Out —Richard Feynman

I like the way he starts out by describing the way he was taught things by his father. It is interesting to think of how many things we are taught in school and throughout life that we don’t really understand. We know the names of things or the words to things but we don’t know what they mean. We cannot explain what they really are and because of this the knowledge is useless. It is just knowledge and not wisdom.

Knowledge is knowing what something is and wisdom is knowing how to apply and use that knowledge. There are many people with a lot of knowledge but there a few with wisdom. There are few people that understand the knowledge they have and are able to apply it to life and to the real word in a way that makes having the knowledge useful. Like Feynman said, it doesn’t matter if you know the name of a bird. You still don’t know anything about that bird and the knowledge you have about it is useless. You have to understand more about the bird, its behavior, before you can say you have an understanding of what type of bird it is. The knowledge of its name does not make you a wise person, it rather makes you a person full of useless information.