One of the fairly new developments with which the last few generations of humans have had to contend is being part of a society in which there is more information than any one person can reasonably be expected to absorb. If you think about it – in terms of human history – this is actually a fairly recent development. If you lived in the year 1700, for example, you could conceivably read everything that had ever been published on a topic like, for example, chemistry, before you tried to embark on a career as a chemist. That doesn’t work anymore: if a student of chemistry tried to read everything that has been published on chemistry, there’s no way to finish reading everything in just a single lifetime. In addition, it’s a pretty safe bet that in chemistry (in addition to a host of other subjects), new material is being published at a fast enough rate that even if you set out to read all the material that was published after the date that you started reading, not only will you not be able to keep up, but you’ll get farther and farther behind.