Without Climbing High, We Do Not Know the Height of Heaven

“Without climbing a high mountain, one does not know the height of heaven; without approaching a deep ravine, one does not know the depth of the earth.” The line comes from Xunzi's “Encouragement of Learning”. It follows his claim that learning must not cease and uses mountain and ravine to show that judgement is limited by one's position. Learning changes the vantage point from which we measure the world.

The sentence does not mean that personal experience can replace all knowledge. A higher viewpoint broadens what can be seen, but may create new blind spots. A restrained modern reading is this: before declaring that we understand a problem, ask whether we have actually entered it and whether other people's experience has helped us move beyond our original position.

https://ctext.org/xunzi/quan-xue