Love of Learning, the "Sine Qua Non" of Human Existence

Dr. Zena Hitz's "Lost in Thought" celebrates the Love of Learning as the essentially human condition. She traces the Christian Love of Learning to Mary, Mother of God. Mary was deeply learned in the Hebrew scriptures, studied the law & daily meditated on the prophets. So she understood the angel's message that she would bear a son as part of  God's plan for salvation.

Next Dr. Hitz writes about William Herschel & his sister Caroline, amateur astronomers of the eighteenth century. William was working as a music teacher in Bath, England. He developed a passion for star-gazing & building telescopes. After five years, he brought over his sister Caroline from Germany to housekeep & assist him. She had acquired some education against the wishes of her family. She took to astronomy like a fish to water. The siblings, after hard work, built a telescope from scratch & discovered Uranus in 1781.

She also cites Jonathan Rose's "The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes", where numerous cases of the effect of reading on people living in poverty are listed. A shoemaker's daughter, Mary Smith (b.1822) says, "I could follow Shakespeare, Dryden & Goldsmith fully & with delight."

In India also, the former President Abdul Kalam envisioned a "Knowledge Society." But we have become a "Start-Up" society to get rich quick!