Wendell Berry: "The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance"

Berry, Wendell. “A Letter to Wes Jackson.” Home Economics. Berkeley, CA: North Point Press, 1987.

The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it. To those who rejoice in abundance and intricacy, this is a source of joy. To those would-be solvers of “the human problem,” who hope for knowledge equal to (capable of controlling) the world, it is a source of unremitting defeat and bewilderment. One thing we do know, and dare not forget, is that better solutions than ours have at times been made by people with much less information than we have. We know, too that the same information that in one [person’s] hands will ruin the land, in another’s will save and improve it. (Berry: 65)