The Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are The Most Important -
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It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning. — Lincoln SteFFENS
In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb describes our relationship between books and knowledge using the legendary Italian writer Umberto Eco (1932-2016).
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have. How many of these books have you read?” and the others—a very small minority—who get the point is that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendages but a research tool. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means … allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning. — Lincoln SteFFENS
underestimate the value of what we don’t know
overvalue what we do know
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