Introduction
Ignorance is a gift, for ignorance leads to a path of discovery. "To know you know nothing is in its self to know much". I heard this line from a TV episode of Kung Fu many years ago and it always stayed in my mind. I assume it is a slight misquote from Confucius' "To know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge".Along the same lines, Socrates said "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." In Stuart Firestein's book Ignorance, How it drives Science, a case is made that science deals in lack of knowledge. The process of searching for answers is more important than actually finding often elusive answers. Science usually produces more questions: often many more questions than answers. I always tell my students I want them to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Firestein recommends "uncertainty without irritability." He argues that we are most imaginative when we are the most uncertain. I think this state is important for critical thinking skills and the scientific process in general. Science is much more than an accumulation of facts and it is seldom an orderly sequential process. Even Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge! The idea of discovery is a Platonic view that the world can be investigated and we can eventually learn about everything in it by asking questions. Plato was a student of Socrates.
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