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it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.
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“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

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Source
The Art of Literature
Date
1851
English wording
T. Bailey Saunders — Translator · from German
Meaning

Meaning of “it is only when he has turned it…”

Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.

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AttitudeBookCuriosityEducation Quotes About Teaching & Intellectual FormationGrowthGrowth MindsetHumilityInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityLearning Quotes About Curiosity, Study & ExperienceLifeLife AdviceLife LessonsMindMindsetMotivation For LifePersonal GrowthReadingShortThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentUnderstanding
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If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
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“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

Francis Bacon · The Advancement of Learning · 1605
Meaning & context

Intellectual confidence can be improved by beginning with questions rather than pretending certainty too early.

Source details

The Advancement of Learning, First Book, Project Gutenberg #5500, transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition. Bacon contrasts impatience of doubt with mature suspension of judgment and then sets out two ways of contemplation before saying that beginning with certainties ends in doubts while beginning with doubts can end in certainties. It remains early-modern epistemological argument rather than a modern experimental rule for scientific method.

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a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.
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“a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The Art of Literature · 1851
Meaning & context

Accumulated information is distinguished from understanding: Schopenhauer values knowledge that has been actively compared, connected and reconsidered over a larger but unprocessed store.

Source details

The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The library analogy immediately precedes the sentence.

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all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure and complex object into its component aspects
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“all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure and complex object into its component aspects”

Walter Pater · Appreciations, with an Essay on Style · 1889
Meaning & context

Pater describes intellectual progress as learning to distinguish parts within what initially seems confused, a method that makes clearer categories and more exact judgment possible.

Source details

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, essay “Style,” printed page 5 in the standard Macmillan 1910 Library Edition pagination reproduced by Project Gutenberg #4037. “all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation...” opens Pater’s argument by distinguishing prose, verse and poetry. This is literary-aesthetic criticism, not a modern experimental claim about cognition or learning.

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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.
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“Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.”

William James · The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy · 1897
Meaning & context

James resists treating every possible intellectual mistake as catastrophic, because an excessive fear of error can itself prevent inquiry, experience and the possibility of gaining truth.

Source details

The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James is contrasting the risk of being mistaken with the cost of refusing every uncertain intellectual venture.

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
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“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

Francis Bacon · Of Studies · 1625
Meaning & context

Bacon distinguishes what reading, conversation, and writing each contribute to intellectual development.

Source details

Of Studies; Bacon distinguishes the intellectual uses of reading, conversation, and writing within the essay’s compact account of study and judgment.

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Experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive.
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“Experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive.”

John Dewey · Democracy and Education · 1916
Meaning & context

Dewey treats experience as a combination of doing and undergoing consequences, with understanding developing through the relationship between action and what follows from it.

Source details

Democracy and Education (1916), Chapter XI, “Experience and Thinking.” Dewey describes experience as a relation between doing and undergoing consequences, then immediately qualifies the active-passive formulation by saying that valuable experience includes cognition insofar as relationships and continuities are perceived. Verified against Project Gutenberg #852 and the scan-backed Wikisource Chapter XI transcription. The sentence is not a denial that cognition matters and is not presented as modern neuroscientific evidence.

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