I love this quote, attributed to Sir Isaac Newton:
What we know is a drop; what we don’t know is an ocean.
The image is well-chosen. Compared to a mere drop, the ocean is vastly, unfathomably larger. Not only that, the drop would utterly, unrecognizably disappear within the ocean.
This lends itself well to revisiting and putting into perspective a favorite model, the circle of competence.
That is useful, but of course only a view about a single person.
If we compared one person’s competence with everyone’s, it might look like something like the following.
Of course Euler diagrams visualize relationships, not scale. The following almost certainly also does not show the proper scale, but perhaps it gives a better idea of the differences.
Understand these not as two-dimensional, but actually as multi-dimensional spaces, here only reduced in resolution for purposes of simple visualization.
Our quote from the beginning went further, drawing the distinction between what we collectively know and everything else that we do not, i.e. everything else that is theoretically knowable.
Compared to a single drop, the ocean is not infinite. However it is so vastly larger that it might as well be. The following view is not accurate, but again, perhaps it points to the right idea.
The most obvious takeaway: Humility.
The difference between a drop and an ocean is so large that the little we do have does not even give us a clear idea of how much else there is.