The winter is coming and I, decided to write questions. So to start, I have a question on the idea of ignorance. Yes, it means lack of knowledge; and again, yes, it has a negative sense. We use the word ‘ignorance’ in conversation and refer it as reluctance to know something. We like to say, ‘Ignorance is a bliss’ and pointed it to a situation where people do not bother to know about something, a fact, a nearly truth phenomenon. Yet ignorance is never about that. It is never about an opinion, it is a real situation that stays, remains, even our understanding about things — in form of knowledge — increased more rapidly and systemically.

Stuart Firestein on his first chapter of his book Ignorance: How it Drives Science (2012) book says, “Knowledge is a big subject. Ignorance is bigger. And it is more interesting.” I once questioned about this. Like what in the hell interesting about ignorance? Why should I care about ‘not knowing’?

Exactly. Because apparently, we still do not know about the ‘not knowing’ itself.

However, a sophisticated attempt has been done by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger. Based on the long-term notion of production of knowledge and substantial content on history and philosophy of science, they took ignorance further and compiled some writings in 2008 titled Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. They both concern in the epistemology of ignorance and question the naturalness of ignorance. Is it a native state, an innocent one? A cultural production? Part of political struggle?

Ignorance is what we are now. We can see it in our knowledge which was born from not knowing things lead to inquiries and questions. We can see it in ourselves; it is impossible for us to know about every thing thus we are always ignorant towards something. We can see it in our social and mainstream media. We can see it in our policy maker and their bounded rationality, limitation in cognitive capability to understand some issues. We can see rightly through our education and pedagogic endeavors. You name it. We see ignorance everywhere.

In real life, each of us is bounded to selectivity out of personal interest and curiosity on particular knowledge. That’s why some of us struggle to study, to know things (and not merely for effing degree). Some of us are fortunate enough to have a chance against selected ignorance and most of us are not. However, some of us also try to know things that based on values in the medium of culture and religion. But we all are, in general, want to know things.

Perhaps this is a very naive view to assume that people actually want to know something true. Yet I still do believe it is our nature as human; we were born ignorant and in our linear, temporary progress, we learn to know. Bigotry — like someone screams ‘earth is flat’ — must be understood sociologically since it is not about the ‘ignorance’ period. Instead, it is ‘the public ignorance of science’ that has its own complexity and structured analysis to see what is really happening.

Finally, knowledge has no boundaries as well as ignorance. If ignorance of science strolls around in every day of life, why then scientific knowledge stays in labs and classes? I do appreciate many efforts that have been done by some good people to bring scientific knowledge in public. Yet I would like to take this further; to see knowledge not in a silo kind of way but also in form of wisdom and values interexchange. Theology can be a really good friend with Sociology and Anthropology (believe me my father has done research on this). Engineering can have a great conversation with History and Politics (have you not seen Indonesian case in the New Order era). Genetics indeed has a strong association with Ethics and fight for Democracy (if you are interested I could show you a story of searching for an identity through DNA). Myths and Literature are also strongly linking to Religion. Even recently there is growing interest to expand the Cultural approach to Big Data Analytics (there is a specific master course on it).

Our ignorance, then, is necessary(?)