HANDOUT
Agnotology – Theory Presentation
By Al Blanchard
Agnotology Background – Coined in the 1990s by Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, Stanford historians of science, agnotology is the study of ignorance: why we don’t know what we don’t know. The word agnotology comes from the Greek ‘agno’ for the unknown. Agnotology is a new philosophy of ignorance meant to complement the very-well-established epistemology, the study of knowledge. To link the two, the cover of the Routledge International Handbook or Ignorance Studies boldly warns that “Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.” To create ignorance in the public, an entity composed of “Bad people speaking effectively” (Ryan Skinnel, Octalog 4) intentionally creates public confusion or public ignorance to counter the effects of scientific knowledge that would demand dramatic changes or even the demise of the entity (typically a corporation). The entity’s goal is to perpetuate a manufactured controversy so that no action is taken that would cause it harm; e.g., government regulation. Robert Proctor states that “our primary purpose here is to promote the study of ignorance, by developing tools for understanding how and why various forms of knowing have ‘not come to be’ or disappeared, or have been delayed or long neglected, for better or for worse, at various points in history” and that “ignorance has a history and a complex political and sexual geography and does a lot of other odd and arresting work that bears exploring.” Proctor further states that “the idea that a great deal of attention has been given to epistemology (the study of how we know) when how or why we don’t know is often just as important, usually far more scandalous, and remarkably undertheorized.”
Agnotology’s Three Types of Ignorance – Ignorance here is not a pejorative – it’s our natural state as we can’t know everything or even that much. Further, we are constantly forgetting as we age generating our own personal ignorance. In addition, some ignorance is a public good: we don’t want everyone to know how to make biological weapons or our personal data. Proctor and Schiebinger define three types of ignorance: native state, lost realm, and strategic ploy. Native State is how we typically consider ignorance, a vacuum to be filled with knowledge as we’re all born ignorant, and our lives are spent gathering knowledge. Lost Realm is that knowledge missing from the archive and is typically based on a selective choice to favor one type of knowledge over another. In this sense, it’s a naturally passive construct that doesn’t necessarily have ill intent. On the other hand, Strategic Ploy does have ill intent and is the ignorance socially constructed to maintain the status quo via perpetual doubt and/or confusion when scientific data would demand action for health or social justice reasons.
Selected References
Gross, Mattias and Linsey McGoey, editors. Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Routledge, 2015.
Proctor, Robert and Londa Scheibinger, editors. Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford, 2008.
PRESENTATION
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
