[lit-ideas] Re: Agnotology
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 11:24:35 +0100 (BST)
Popper on knowledge and ignorance (from the beginning of "The Logic of the
Social Sciences", reprinted as Ch.5 "In Search of a Better World":-
"_First thesis_: We have a fair amount of knowledge. Moreover, we know not only
details of doubtful intellectual interest, but also, and more especially,
things that are not only of considerable practical importance, but may, in
addition, provide us with deep theoretical insight, and with a surprising
understanding of the world.
_Second thesis_: Our ignorance is boundless and sobering. Indeed, it is
precisely this overwhelming progress of the natural sciences (to which my first
thesis alludes) that continually reminds us of our ignorance, even in the field
of the natural sciences themselves.
This gives a new twist to the Socratic idea of ignorance. With each step
forward, with every problem we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved
problems, but we also discover that just when we believed that we were standing
on firm and safe ground, all things are, in reality, insecure and unstable.
Of course, my two theses about knowledge and ignorance only appear to
contradict each other. The chief cause of this apparent contradiction lies in
the fact that the word 'knowledge' is used in a rather different sense in each
of the two theses: so much so that I propose to make this explicit in the
following third thesis.
_Third thesis_: Every theory of knowledge has a fundamentally important task,
which may even be regarded as its crucial test: it must do justice to our first
two theses by clarifying the relations between our remarkable and constantly
increasing knowledge and our constantly increasing insight that in reality we
know nothing....
_Fourth thesis_: So far as one can say at all that science or knowledge
starts from something, one might say the following: Knowledge does not start
from perceptions or observations or the collection of data or facts; it starts,
rather, from _problems_. One might say: No knowledge without problems; but
also, no problems without knowledge. But this means that knowledge starts from
the tension between knowledge and ignorance: No problems without knowledge - no
problems without ignorance. For every problem arises from the discovery that
there is something amiss within our supposed knowledge; or, viewed logically,
from the inner contradiction in our supposed knowledge, or of a contradiction
between our supposed knowledge and the facts; or, to be more accurate, from the
discovery of an apparent contradiction between our supposed knowledge and the
supposed facts."
Of course, these are the views of a theorist of knowledge who believes that
epistemology in its logical analysis is to be separated from the social and
psychological explanation of 'knowledge' [as a kind of 'power', for example]
and such views may not appeal to the "agnotologist" who may wear the guise of a
theorist of knowledge but in fact be a proponent of a specific sociological
theory of knowledge which is covertly advanced by explaining 'ignorance' in
terms of social biases.
Donal
London
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