Plague Journal, Ignorance
I have completed the preface of a book, AGNOTOLOGY [The Making & Unmaking of Ignorance], edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger. The subject is “ignorance,” the history and the function of ignorance. I was intrigued to select this book because there is current an outbreak of studied, deliberate ignorance, ignorance which is politically correct, a ticket of admission to Trump World.
The book is a collection of scholarly essays which survey the subject. Section headings within in the table of contents are:
- SECRECY, SELECTION, AND SUPPRESSION
- LOST KNOWLEDGE, LOST WORLDS
- THEORIZING IGNORANCE
Here are some quotations offered at the end of the preface:
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
— Mark Twain, December 2, 1887
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1789)
Ignorance is king, many would not prosper by its abdication.
— Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.
— Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Handbook (1960)
