{"id":12338,"date":"2013-05-22T19:34:26","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T00:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=12338"},"modified":"2013-05-22T19:34:47","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T00:34:47","slug":"a-little-bit-of-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=12338","title":{"rendered":"A little bit of learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n“A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
\nDrink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”<\/p>\n

— Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Criticism<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This morning I showed up at a doctor’s office for an appointment to have some minor surgery — nothing serious or worrisome. But the conversation with the receptionist was interesting.<\/p>\n

“I’m here for my 9am surgery,” I said, telling her my name and the name of my doctor.<\/p>\n

The look on the receptionist’s face was somewhere between concern and alarm. “For surgery?<\/i>” she asked.<\/p>\n

Oh no, I thought. Ten minutes until my operation and I’ve gone to the wrong building. We stared at each other in mutual dismay.<\/p>\n

“Hold on,” she said, “I’ll look you up in the computer.”<\/p>\n

There was a worried pause while she clicked on a few things.<\/p>\n

“Oh,” she said, “You’re scheduled for an office procedure at 9am. Have a seat.”<\/p>\n

I was left to ponder this odd little encounter. The receptionist had seemed genuinely confused. Was I naive to assume that when a doctor cuts into you with a knife, it’s always called “surgery”?<\/p>\n

Let’s try turning it around: If the receptionist — who was, in fact, extremely kind and helpful — had also been more experienced, would she have understood immediately what was going on?<\/p>\n

Perhaps we were both suffering from “a little bit of learning”, as so neatly described by Alexander Pope.<\/p>\n

By the way, Pope’s poem references the sacred spring in Pieria, in ancient Macedonia. Maybe somebody who is both artist and scientist could be called a “Pierian”. You could look it up. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A little learning is a dang’rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” — Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Criticism This morning I showed up at a doctor’s office for an appointment to have some minor surgery — nothing serious or worrisome. But the conversation with the receptionist was interesting. “I’m here … Continue reading “A little bit of learning”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12340,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12338\/revisions\/12340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}