I believe it was William Blake who once said, "The larger grows the island of my knowledge, the longer stretch the shores of my ignorance." I know how he felt.
Five years ago, I would have told you that I knew all that I needed to know about performance measurement, performance management, and performance feedback at work. The past six months, I've been delving more deeply into those topics as part of my grad studies. And the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. I am beginning to grasp, though, some important issues around these subjects. I spoke about my new learning at an industry conference for the first time just last week. This is going to be important. Stay tuned! I'll make posts here from time to time about new developments.
The quote is beautiful and provides vivid visual imagery to accompany the concepts of knowledge and ignorance. It really struck a chord with me while reading, and since I used to have great interest in William Blake and his work, I wanted to look up the source of the quote.
I found a handful of people credited with variations of the island of knowledge in a sea of ignorance theme, but they were all after 1992 when John A. Wheeler, a physicist from Princeton University published the following in Scientific American volume 267:
"We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."
I am not 100% sure, but I am fairly confident that this reference is the earliest and most correct attribution.
I couldn't find any reference crediting William Blake with this quote or this metaphor.
Thanks for publishing it, though. I really like it and hope to use it myself. And I would never have come across it without your reference.
Posted by: Mike | September 25, 2007 at 11:16 PM