That principle is represented in a few Zen koans that I recall from my earlier days. It does seem consistent that every person goes through a period in their learning process where they think they know more than they actually know. They exit that phase towards proper mastery only by realizing they know far less than what there is to know.

In the online world, this "middle category" manifests as the "helper who gets constantly corrected". I think we've seen a few of those here, and certainly on Usenet, and definitely on some of the Perl mailing lists.