Review of “Ignorance: How it Drives Science”
A friend of mine mentioned this book and I thought “Ignorance and science in the title, gotta read it.” I did, and I enjoyed it. It is an easy and quick read. It uses lots of examples to support its point. I really enjoyed the case studies that touch upon sensory vs motor skills and brain theory, different perspectives in astrophysics, and how to study mind/conscious. They gave me a glimpse of the fascinating approaches and scales in other fields of science.
The book ends with a chapter touching upon making publicly accessible science and education. The following two quotes from this chapter was well-worth the read.
In a prescient and remarkable document from 1949 on “The German Universities” appear the following lines from a report by the Commission of University Reform in Germany:
Each lecturer in a technical university should possess the following abilities:
(a) To see beyond the limits of this subject matter. In his teaching to make the students aware of these limits, and to show them that beyond these limits forces come into play which are no longer entirely rational, but arise out of life and human society itself.
(b) To show in every subject the way that leads beyond its own narrow confines to broader horizons of its own.
and
Instead of a system where a collection of facts is an end, where knowledge is equated with accumulation where ignorance is rarely discussed, we will have to provide the wiki-raised student with a taste of and for the boundaries, the edge of the widening circle of ignorance, how the data, which are not unimportant, frames the unknown. We must teach students how to think in questions, and how to manage ignorance.
Clearly, our current education system, where we are interested in teaching expert opinions as opposed to teaching how to ask question and think, has long way in terms of the above quote.
Read the book if you are interested in the way of science.
