The Expanding Map of Knowledge and Ignorance (And Why You Should Create Your Own)
Centuries ago, two Italian explores set sail out into the open ocean.
One became incredibly famous. His name, until today, is prized on a global front. The other was—and still is—relatively unknown, even though two entire continents were named in his honor.
What happened? And how did it come to be so?
The story trickles down to a game of mindsets.
On August 3rd, 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed westward from Spain, heading toward Japan, with a mission to seek a new trade route to East Asia. But after more than two months at sea, he and his crew landed on an island in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean.
The Italian explorer thought he had reached an island off the coast of East Asia because the map that he was using, a 1491 map of the world which was created by German cartographer Henricus Martellus, told him so.
Of course, he was wrong, but adamant in his belief that they had arrived at their intended destination, Columbus called the people he found there ‘Indians.’ That’s because he was under the impression that he had landed in the Indies—what in the modern world is known as the Indonesian Archipelago.
What Columbus didn’t know, however, was that the map he was using showed the entire world as it was known to the 15th century Europeans at the time. The problem with this map? It had no empty spaces. No gaps. No room for errors and unknowns. It gave the impression that the Europeans had garnered a complete familiarity with the entire world—even though they had yet to set foot in some areas like the pacific ocean.
The 1491 Martellus Map. The map is full of details, even in areas such as the Pacific Ocean that were yet to be explored by the Europeans at the time. Source.
Another problem with this map? It left out two entirely unknown continents that sit across the Pacific Ocean between East Asia and Spain. Two lands that are known today, as North America and South America.
But as more and more explores began to sail out on expeditions from Europe to America, somewhere between 1499 and 1504, Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci published texts arguing the possibility that the new lands that had been discovered by Columbus were not islands off the East Asian coast. Rather, they were lands that formed an entire continent still unknown to Scriptures and geographers at the time.
So in 1507, convinced by Amerigo’s arguments and using his letters as a guide, German mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller drew a new map and named the territory in Amerigo’s honor—America.
The irony of it all?
Columbus, the man who actually discovered the Americas, was convinced that he knew the whole world. In his refusal to even consider his potential ignorance, he failed to spark his curiosity to consider other alternatives.
Hence, the little-known sailor who had the courage to say ‘hold on, we might be wrong, there’s a lot that we don’t know here,’ was gifted the honor of having two of the seven continents on earth named after him.
The Salviati World Map, 1525. It shows what had already been discovered—Europe, Asia, Africa—and most recently at the time: The Americas. The map is mostly empty but expands into the emptiness to depict what is yet to come. In a way, it signifies a mental shift in the European explores at the time—they embraced their ignorance and learned that they still have much to discover and explore. Source.
Learn to Embrace Your Own Ignorance
A few years ago, I used to act in a way that projected total arrogance—as if to indicate to myself and people around me that I knew it all. Like I had it all figured out for myself. But it only took me a few months into my first ever entrepreneurial venture to realize this: I know nothing.
Like stripping off a dark-colored veil that was diluting your view, I decided to strip myself bare of this self-constructed ego. I stepped out of the cloud and I saw the light.
That’s when I learned about the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s a type of cognitive bias whereby people who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence in it. This is why a person, despite his lack of knowledge or experience in a specific domain, can still think he’s amazing at it.
That’s also when I landed upon the words of Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, who once wrote:
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.”
And that’s precisely when I embraced a new philosophy in my life, one that I continue to live by today: I am a student of life, for life.
I became a student.
I became the craftsman seeking mastery in his craft.
I learned how to embrace my ignorance rather than blindly shun it away. I learned how to say “I don’t know,” instead of pretentiously posing and acting as if I do. And that changed everything for me. I became a ferocious reader and self-learner. I began to lean into my curiosity, expand my knowledge, and cultivate my mind’s garden.
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s business partner sums it up well in his book, The Complete Investor when he writes:
“Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”
Just as how the universe is always expanding, so should you in your well of knowledge. Because wisdom doesn’t come with age, it crowns itself as you continue to cultivate your own curiosity—as you continue to seek new experiences, expand your knowledge, and learn new things.
You become wiser as you embrace your own ignorance and diminish that gap, as you develop yourself into a lifelong self-learner, and as you begin to see yourself as a student of life for life.
And how do you do that?
You create your own map of knowledge and ignorance.
Draw a Map with Spaces Left to Fill in, Load it with Knowledge of What You Know, and Then Seek out What You Don’t
In his book Sapiens, author Yuval Noah Harari explains that after Amerigo Vespucci’s texts and Martin Waldseemüller’s newly-developed map, “European geographers and scholars in almost all other fields of knowledge began to draw maps with spaces left to fill in. They began to admit that their theories were not perfect and that there were important things that they did not know.”
It was this discovery that prompted me to sketch out my own map of ignorance and knowledge, with spaces left to fill in. It’s a map that highlights the areas of knowledge, expertise, and capabilities I’m confident in while also shedding light on the areas that I want to further seek, explore, and discover.
At its core, it’s a simple visual representation of all that you know and all that you don’t. It serves to remind you that you are a student of life for life. That indeed, your knowledge is expanding, but so is your ignorance, for as you continue to learn, there will always be so much more for you to further explore. Hence, I named it The Expanding Map of Knowledge and Ignorance.
Here’s what it looks like:
My personal map of knowledge and ignorance.
The green shaded area represents what you know. The blue shaded area represents what you don’t—your ocean of opportunity. And the scale of mastery to ignorance drawn below signifies the extent of your knowledge.
Truth is, it’s rare to exceed a level of mastery in more than one or two fields of knowledge. That’s because mastery takes years upon years of practice and compounding knowledge.
It’s obvious, however, that our ocean of ignorance will be both, far more extreme and far larger than our forest of knowledge. The good news, though? It’s that the map is always expanding—which means that greenery spreads as you feed it with more knowledge.
So here’s why I think you should create your own map:
It helps you identify your knowledge gaps in the areas that actually matter to you. What I loved most about this exercise is that it revealed to me the areas of my interest and gave me a chance to evaluate my own expertise in them. I didn’t think of adding “programming” or “furniture design” to what I don’t know because these topics don’t interest me as much as “space” or “yogic philosophy” or “emotional intelligence.”
It highlights your strengths. The closer you are to mastery, the more strengths you have in the specific area of discussion.
It helps you understand yourself better by identifying the fields you wish to master and the ones you want to further improve upon or explore next. It gives you a holistic view of where you stand today so you can phase out the steps for what’s ahead.
There are two more things to note:
You can theme your maps. For instance, you can have an entire map focused on building an online coaching practice: List out all the areas within that domain that you know well, and all the areas that you know you must learn, improve upon, or maybe even outsource.
There’s nothing fixed about this map. The elements are always changing. So, over time, as you delve deeper into the topics on the ignorance end, they will naturally shift into the “what I know” side.
Example of how to use a themed map to figure out what areas you have knowledge in and what areas require you to seek further education in.
Ignite your Own Personal Revolution
"The scientific revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The greatest discovery that launched the scientific revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions."
That’s what author Yuval Noah Harari wrote in his book, Sapiens.
There’s a plethora of knowledge waiting for you to be discovered. The way to tap into that is to ignite your personal revolution of ignorance. Kindle that flame and let it burn. Pick up a pen and create your own map. Fill its empty spaces with all the knowledge of what you know and identify all that you don’t. All that you wish to learn and explore. And all the ideas you’re interested in and curious about.
In doing so, we remind ourselves that our ideas are not complete. That our ignorance is present and blissful. And that we are students of life for life.