ABSTRACT
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is reported to have remarked that the learning of many things does not suffice to make one wise, else Pythagoras would have been wise. Seeing that the name of the latter graces one of the best-known theorems of Euclidean geometry— I assume that every high school graduate knows this theorem—it is obvious that, on this reckoning, the stakes are high indeed when it comes to wisdom. Be that as it may, it is certain that the learning of many things at least enlarges the mind, and an enlarged mind is a critical mind. I will suggest below that one of the most important functions of a critical mind is the probing of identities. But the Heraclitean remark about knowledge and wisdom suggests a similar view about the relation between scholarship and wisdom. If scholarship is simply the learning of many things, the relations are not just similar; they are identical. The message, then, is that the class of foolish scholars is not an empty one.
