To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.

We have equated a cancer diagnosis to 'death,' but we look at diabetes as 'something that you get when you get older.' But look at diabetes - it's the leading cause of limb amputation, heart disease, kidney failure. Many people don't equate diabetes with these other destructive things. I didn't equate it to those until I started reading about it.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.