“...to think that before Pasteur's discovery of microbes, doctors fought duels over the merits of balsam of Peru versus tar oil for wound infection. Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion. Still, each generation of physicians imagined that ignorance was the special provenance of their elders.”

Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese - “...to think that before Pasteur's...” 1

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“Or to think that before Pasteur's discovery of microbes, doctors fought duels over the merits of balsam of Peru vs. tar oil for wound infection. Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion. Still, each generation of physicians imagined that ignorance was the special provenance of their elders.”

Abraham Verghese
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“Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.”

Abraham Verghese
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“Still, our knowledge of the planets was meager, and where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination”

Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“We all would like to know more and, at the same time, to receive less information. In fact, the problem of a worker in today's knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. The same holds for professionals: just think of a physician or an executive, constantly bombarded by information that is at best irrelevant. In order to learn anything we need time. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little.”

Mario Augusto Bunge
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