One of the first lessons one learns when beginning a serious study of something is ignorance. Your lack of knowledge is vast. You are without purchase in a treacherous, inhospitable and endless landscape.

It’s a rather humbling (and, for many, disheartening) experience. And yet, we don’t seem to learn the right lesson.

We do, however, start off on the right track. Met with the realization that we are mere pimples on the big white, splotchy face of intellectual endeavor, we work (well, actually we give up — but that’s another story).

Eventually, after a little time we go from pimple to wart. Then to large, unsightly blotch. And, before you know it, we’re covering every little part of that face of knowledge with the disgusting rash of comprehension. Hooray.

(Okay, I admit, that was a dreadful analogy. I mean, facial skin disorders as a metaphor for education? That’s absurd. On the other hand, I almost drove off the edge of the Grand Canyon last week, so cut me some slack.)

Anyway, where was I. Ah, yes. Comprehension. So we understand, we have it ... covered. Knowledge is ours. The world an oyster. Strippers lining up to sleep with us. Or something like that.

The only problem is, we don’t. We’re not. We haven’t. We are still ignorant. All we’ve managed to do is fool ourselves with a little illusion.

It is true that we are experts in our field (or more precisely in some tiny, miniscule, ever so small corner of our field), but in the course of thousands of years the sphere of human knowledge has grown vast. And we never seem to notice.

Secure in the knowledge of one thing, we assume we know it all. We forget the lesson of humility, but cling on to the hard graft of knowledge acquired. And we find ourselves believing in the universality of the latter.

This might be worse for me because I’m a physicist. Our arrogance is almost without bound. We preen ourselves with platitudes, assurances that ours is the king of the sciences and that, since science bestrides human endeavor, we hold all the answers. And so, we assume the capability to pass judgment on absolutely everything.

Be it biology or chemistry. Climate science or engineering. Economics or history. We insist that we are not only qualified to hold an opinion, but that ours is the right one.

Actually, it’s the former one of those sentiments that’s the real problem. We are not qualified to hold an opinion. We know nothing outside of our fields, how on earth can we even contemplate elevating ourselves to the same level as those who have studied half a lifetime or more?

Hypocrisy is a funny thing. You don’t really recognize it even when it’s right in front of you if you’re the one blithely embracing it.

You know how it is — you sit around with a few friends, watch some stupid movie and laugh at the idiotic science. Or, perhaps, you read some ridiculous magazine article in which the author has no idea about high school biology, but still discusses genomics like she’s being doing it for years.

It could be the news, too. Opinion writers are always drifting off into areas outside of their expertise and getting it completely wrong. So we mock.

Fiction writers as well. Oh, they’re the worst. They grab some hard fact, and before you know it everything’s been twisted into some metaphysical nonsense. Idiots. Why can’t they just stick to what they know?

Us on the other hand, we can do anything. Why stick to what we know, we Renaissance men, women and the occasional child prodigy? We know it all. And we aren’t afraid to shout it from the rooftops.

It’s tragic really. I miss humility. It’s an underrated skill. I wish dearly that I had it. But I can’t help myself. If it exists, then I have to have an opinion. And it has to be right. And everyone else is an idiot. Be it marine biology or social choice theory, I always have something to say. Even if I know that I should just shut up.

And yet, as bad as hypocrisy is, the alternative is frightening. Do we really live in a world where knowledge is so vast and varied that not only can we not grasp it all, but we can only cling to threads and patches? Must we accept the judgment of experts and never understand it? That is a sobering and chilling thought.