It’s often claimed that science is about accumulating knowledge. But knowledge accumulation is only one side of the scientific coin. This thread contains 10 quotes from scientists, philosophers of science, sociologists, feminists, and statisticians who’ve highlighted the importance of ignorance in science, both as a precursor and a product. Enjoy!
“George Bernard Shaw, in a toast at a dinner feting Albert Einstein, proclaimed, ‘Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more.’ Isn’t that glorious? Science…produces ignorance, possibly at a faster rate than it produces knowledge.”
“The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance.”
“‘Specified ignorance’: the express recognition of what is not yet known but needs to be known in order to lay the foundation for still more knowledge.”
Robert Merton (1987) “Three fragments from a sociologist's notebooks: Establishing the phenomenon, specified ignorance, and strategic research materials”: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.13.080187.000245
Scientists should always feel unsatisfied with the answers to their questions:
“The scientist, by the very nature of [their] commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity [….] is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.”
“Ignorance is a social creation, like knowledge. Indeed, we cannot even talk about particular instances of ignorance without referring to the viewpoint of some group or individual.”
“While some groups might benefit from the knowledge and ignorance produced, others might suffer. Epistemically, this pattern contributes to a partial and distorted view of the world; socially, it contributes to inequality, favoring some groups over others.”
“If we were not ignorant there would be no probability, there could only be certainty. But our ignorance can't be absolute, for then there would be no longer any probability at all. Thus the problems of probability may be classed according to the greater or less depth of this ignorance.”
In statistics, inductive inferences require a “postulate of ignorance”:
“The postulate of ignorance asserts that certain things are not known and that the validity of the argument requires that they should not be known; and of course this is fundamental to any correct statement of uncertainty.”
“I support ignorance. There is my philosophy. I have the tranquility of ignorance and faith in science....”
“I live in a state of ignorance; therein is my philosophy. I have tranquillity of ignorance and faith in science. Others cannot live without faith, without belief, without theories that explain everything. These, I do without. I sleep on the pillow of ignorance.”
@MarkRubin “Science has precisely this responsibility to teach us, through reason and experiment, what we do not know, and clearly to show us the limit of our present knowledge.”
From
Nelson, Gareth J., and Pauline Y. Ladiges. 2009. “Biogeography and the Molecular Dating Game: A Futile Revival of Phenetics?” Bull. Soc. Géol. Fr 180 (1): 39–43.
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