When the 18th-century English poet Thomas Gray said
“where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise,” he wasn’t, as urban myths
often assume, suggesting that being ignorant bestows people with a sense of
pleasure and contentment. He was merely reflecting back to his joyous time of
learning at Eton College where he was once a student. Regardless of Gray’s much-quoted and misrepresented lines, ignorance
tends to be characterised as an antonym of knowledge.
The relationship between
the two, however, is much more complex. Neither knowledge nor ignorance is
absolute. After all, people with knowledge in certain areas may be ignorant in
other areas. Knowledge is not synonymous with wisdom either as is evident in the
many acts of folly committed by those with years of meticulous knowledge
accumulation in centres of higher education. How else do we explain the endless
spirals of mindless wars, environmental degradation, and corporate greed in the
world? And what about the likes of religious fanatics, misogynists, and climate
sceptics? Wouldn’t the label of ‘ignorant’ be much too benign for such
politically regressive groups?
Indeed, it is politics that navigates the space between knowledge
and ignorance. The politics of power drives scientific research on “defence”
and the politics of business works on the commercialisation of ideas and
knowledge generation. Both thrive on a discourse of ignorance to exploit a
constructed climate of uncertainty about issues around security, health, and
well-being. And then there is the ambiguous area of ideology as well. For
example, are parents who refuse to vaccinate their children “ignorant” or just
proponents of a particular ideology? For many, taking a ‘natural’ path to
healthcare, which includes rejecting vaccinations, is an ideological position
that assumes nature and the ‘natural’ stand in opposition to science.
The knowledge-ignorance dichotomy is particularly strong in
the discourses of science and technology. The early 20th century
philosopher of science Karl Popper believed that scientific knowledge was
evolutionary. As he argued in All Life is Problem Solving, the advance
of scientific knowledge stopped ignorance in its tracks. But he didn’t contend
with the explicit politicization of science and technology which leads to
people making judgements on science based on their own political affiliations. A
recent special issue of Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on “The Politics of Science: Political Values
and the Production, Communication, and Reception of Scientific Knowledge”
explores this interplay between science and politics in considerable depth. The
special issue editors, Elizabeth Suhay and James Druckman, point out that
debates over issues of science such as evolution, stem cell research, use of
nuclear power, and fracking, are intensely political. As they point out in
their introduction to the special issue, “A range of human values, including political and religious ones, influence the
process of scientific discovery as well
as the dissemination and public reception of scientific findings.”
In an article in this same special issue, Mathew Nisbet and Declan Fahy have called upon
journalists in particular to draw on “expert knowledge” and “facilitate
discussion” to not only bridge ideological divisions but also to get people to
look more broadly at the interplay between technologies and policy options.
Such a call is part of a growing campaign to foster stronger, structured, and
succinct science communication to spread scientific knowledge to the masses.
Nisbet and Fahy’s piece is in fact the
starting point for a thought-provoking commentary in Public Understanding of Science by Kristian H.
Nielsen and Mads P. Sørensen (now available online ahead of print). These two
scholars from Aarhus University of Denmark endorse Nisbet and Fahy’s call but
go a step beyond to make a bold statement of their own. They say that alongside
knowledge, science communicators need to pay a lot more attention to the idea
of ignorance too. Arguing that ignorance
or “non-knowledge” is here to stay and is not something that will eventually go
away, they “assert that different forms of ignorance not only are fundamental
to processes of scientific knowledge production but also are virtuous to
democratic deliberation”. They argue that focusing on how ignorance works in
different settings can help “develop even more diverse and socially responsible
practices within science communication.”
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