A Little Learning is a Dang’rous Thing.

The other day, I retweeted a relatively old tweet I had posted: the quote from Bakr Abu Zaid’s Hilyah Talib al-‘Ilm cautioning seekers of knowledge to beware of becoming Abu Shibr (literally father of a handspan). Someone replied asking me to elaborate on what the statement meant. This was my reply:

Concerning the warning against becoming Abu Shibr, Ibn ‘Uthaimin commented, “He becomes arrogant because he does not recognize his own self in reality. The second becomes humble, but sees himself as a scholar. And the third sees himself as ignoramus [who] does not know.”

Many have heard the popular saying, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” This is a slight misquotation of a line of poetry by Alexander Pope; “A little learning is a dang’rous thing;” taken from his An Essay on Criticism.

The line plays to the idea that a little learning or cursory knowledge of a topic can lead to the illusion of true deep seated knowledge of that topic, thus causing the learner to become a bit arrogant thinking they know, when really, they don’t. This can obviously lead the person to some serious mistakes and gaffs. This is the first shibr, or handspan, of knowledge.

The second handspan is the beginning of the transition to the third. As a seeker of knowledge learns more, he begins to humble himself as the reality that he doesn’t really know all that much begins to settle in, though a bit of that initial arrogance still exists within him.

The third handspan is when you finally come to the realisation that you don’t really know anything at all and the learning is truly a life long endeavour, that things are rarely ever black and white and that there is a lot of grey.

For those interested, here’s a short analysis of the relevant bit from Pope’s poem.