The Value of Knowing Less

I have often praised the value of new knowledge. But letS consider a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared enough for him to deliver a speech advising the college to learn less.

“I found the astronomer of the university chasing comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote. “I told him it was no economy to keep piling up raw material in the form of new stars and comets and asteroids that we couldn’t ever use until we’d worked off the old stock.”

Greek would have to go “because it is so hard to spell with, and so unfeasible to read after you get it spelled,” and research in math “was not suited to the dignity of a college, which should deal in facts, not guesses and suppositions.”

Yale didn’t follow his advice, and I don’t think twain truly would have wanted them to, either. So please-guess and suppose away.

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