The Value of Ignorance
“How ignorant”- a phrase often accompanied by a scoff and an eye roll, a phrase meant as an insult, meant to poke fun at the assumed “unenlightened”. It is a rather haughty phrase, more often than not bringing an air of superiority and self-righteousness about the speaker. In a society where the last thing one wants to be is unenlightened, uninformed, unaware, or downright stupid, perhaps we lose sight of a different kind of ignorance. This is an ignorance which requires an acute awareness of what one doesn’t know, something most people keep highly under wraps in a society in which knowledge is considered power. This is the kind of ignorance Stuart Firestein explores in his book, Ignorance, explaining how ignorance can be not only beneficial but crucial to progress and understanding, a rather foreign concept in among today’s population. Firestein reveals that it is a “knowledgeable ignorance… [that] leads us to frame better questions, [which is] the first step to getting better answers” (7). Therefore, perhaps it is not the knowledge that brings about power, but the ignorance.
In contemporary society there is a lofty importance placed on knowledge. We have created an education system in which facts and ideas are hurled at students in the form of textbooks and lectures, facts and ideas committed to memory for fear of failing the final, only to be readily and willingly forgotten the moment the test is handed in. Similar values provide the foundation for professional institutions where more education, more knowledge, place one candidate over another in a job opening. The cultural value of knowledge over knowledgeable ignorance has fostered the notion that it all ends with the facts, rather than an understanding that within them is “the next round of questions, improved questions with new unknowns” (16). The emphasis on the facts is debilitating to progress, while the next round of questions and the exploration of the unknown are what develop deeper understanding, something not to be confused with memorization of fact or history. We can cultivate a deeper understanding about ourselves and the world we live in by “thinking about ignorance and how to make it grow, not shrink… by moving the horizon” (50). Doing so would provide a shift in focus from what we do know to a focus of what we do not know, what we would like to know, what is most interesting to us, and how to go about gaining an understanding of these things. Such a shift could replace the citizenry’s quenchable desire to know simply on a superficial level, with an unrelenting thirst for further and further insight.
There are many ways in which one can engage their own ignorance, to push the envelope and improve understanding beyond the facts. Developing a curiosity for the unknown is paramount, for “when we admit that something is unknown and inexplicable, then we admit also that it is worthy of investigation” (167). Igniting a hunger for the unknown, whether the individually unknown or the unknown at large, allows one to become excited about the discovery of something new and to begin the process of unveiling whatever it might turn out to be. Cultivating curiosity by developing initial questions and beginning the progression toward discovery can help one avoid making inhibiting predictions and becoming too invested in the presumed “right” and “wrong”. Remaining focused on the inquisition prevents disappointment, as well as the acquisition of skewed information and data gathered with a biased frame of mind. This allows “from the engagement [to come] the unexpected, the sudden intuition, the abruptly obvious comprehension, and the new ignorance” (114). With such a shift from the desire to be as omnificent as possible to the desire to explore the unknowns, the world and one’s capacity to understand it transform.
Embracing ignorance opens the doors of discovery in areas one may have previously dismissed as outside of their expertise or comprehensible capability. The world becomes a more accessible and interesting place when one removes the discomfort of becoming “hung up with the details of experimental results or systems of differential equations” (125). The somewhat more easily surmountable analysis behind the composition of music or art, still incapable of preventing enjoyment, makes a good case for why neither convoluted data should prevent us from enjoying discoveries about the universe and the beings inhabiting it. Further, remaining attuned to one’s ignorance does not provide the satisfaction of knowing more than the next person, as knowledge does, but rather “a glimpse of what’s on the other side of their ignorance and an opportunity to see if [one] can’t get the question to be bigger” (107). Ignorance becomes a lifelong journey on the path toward discovery and understanding, one void of the inclination to boast of knowledge and fact, proving itself to be a less strained and more collaborative journey than one toward simply knowing.
The very nature of ignorance dissolves the tension that builds among students and colleagues alike in environments that place so much emphasis on knowledge. This can be seen in the varying levels of knowledge held by peers which can create pressure and competition among them. However, in an environment in which ignorance is emphasized it can easily be seen that, unlike knowledge, everyone possesses the same amount of ignorance. Ignorance is boundless, it levels the playing field, thus emphasizing it “makes everyone feel more equal” (173). The comfort ignorance provides, once one is able to embrace its unfamiliar concepts, can be a driving force toward exploration and insight. While reforming the foundations of our educational and professional institutions may prove a difficult feat, I simply hope that before the next textbook is opened and the next fact committed to memory, more people stop to ask themselves, “What interests me?” “What would I like to understand”, and “How can I gain this understanding?”
Works Cited Firestein, Stuart. Ignorance: How It Drives Science. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.
