Unless academic achievement in one’s youth is followed by lifelong habits of study and inquiry, it may lull a man into grossly overestimating his understanding of the world.
As far as I know, history’s worst example of this was Nevil Maskelyne, the English Astronomer Royal from 1765 to 1811. A key member of the Board of Longitude during a period when Britain was desperately trying to discover a way to calculate longitude at sea, he was so proud of his knowledge of astronomy and mathematics that ...
Published on August 19, 2025 21:01