The article describes what erudition is, how it can be useful, its pluses with minuses and differences from education are given.
Ancient times
Humanity has always understood the value of knowledge. Already at the time of the late primitive system, our ancestors highly appreciated those who possessed certain skills and passed them on to younger generations. Of course, they were very different from people that have amazing knowledge now.
This is precisely one of the main differences between man and animal: it is not enough to have strength, endurance and courage, you must also have a developed intellect, without which, of course, you can live, but the further existence of the species as a whole becomes problematic.
It is the ability to think, analyze, memorize and learn that gives a strong impetus to the evolution of the human species. Although a person, it would seem, is not distinguished by such strength and survival as various predators. Even after millennia, erudition remains an important aspect of life. Of course, it cannot be called decisive, but nevertheless, this factor facilitates existence and allows a person to constantly grow and develop for his own well-being. So what is erudition? What is its essence and how does it differ from education? This we will understand.
Definition
To begin, we will analyze the terminology. The word is derived from the Latin eruditia - scholarship, knowledge. According to the encyclopedia, erudition is a wide knowledge in many different areas, but which are usually not deep.
If we answered the question of what erudition is, erudite is a knowledgeable person, but his knowledge is so vast that it rarely has a strong deepening in a specific area. However, this is not always observed.
The ancient Greeks believed that a scientist can be called a scholar only when his self-education, love of reading, learning new things and comprehending knowledge replaced the man’s initial ignorance, made him more balanced, and he stopped judging something too lopsided and categorically. Such a person began to sincerely learn new things and did not shy away from the fact that he did not know something or did not understand anything at all. And this only additionally pushes him to the process of self-education.
So now we know what erudition is.
Benefit
Like any knowledge that a person can put into practice, wide erudition makes life much easier. In addition to purely practical application, the process of learning something new and understanding it develops a person as a person. After all, our mind, as, for example, the muscles in the body, has the property to change from the presence or absence of loads. Simply put, a person who reads and is engaged in self-education, "pumps" intelligence.
Also, erudition is very important for people of creative professions or mental workers. For example, it is much easier for any scientist to work and research something when he possesses a number of knowledge that is not even directly related to his profession. So now we know what erudition (the meaning of this word) means and how it is useful.
By the way, erudition does not necessarily imply the existence of an education or profession of mental work. Even a simple person who is not related to science or creativity can be a scholar. But the scientist will not necessarily have a broad outlook and knowledge: he can fully concentrate only on one area that he needs for life. This does not mean that he is less intelligent, just everyone chooses the field of knowledge that he wants to possess.
Erudition. Synonyms
The synonyms of this word include the following: learning, knowledge, awareness, omniscience.