Ignorance, History of Concept
Barbara Hoenig, Innsbruck University, Innsbruck, Austria
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
The term ignorance designates nonknowledge, what is unknown, or absent in empirically valid knowledge. Starting from
a distinction of kindred concepts in different scientic disciplines, particularly the concepts role in theories of social action, in
theories of knowledge, and in organizational studies are considered. Finally, current developments in agnotology and in the
sociology of ignorance are discussed.
Proverbs like ignorance is bliss and what you dont know
cant hurt you reect the fact that one should be aware of what
not to know. In scientic discourse, ignorance designates what
is unknown, and absent in empirically valid knowledge, in the
sense of nonknowledge. Thus, ignorance is held distinct both
from the act of ignoring what is known, and from error, risk,
and false beliefs as forms of imperfect or limited knowledge
(Moore and Tumin, 1949: p. 788); rather, ignorance can be
regarded as a more or less hidden component of situations
usually discussed in other terms (Moore and Tumin, 1949: p.
795). Ignorances dynamic role in social change seems to
depend on the recognition of its existence and a subsequent
searching for more adequate knowledge. In a similar vein, the
specication of ignorance has been regarded as prerequisite to
the acquisition of knowledge (Merton, 1987). As subsequently
will be shown, ignorance is related to kindred concepts in
different scientic disciplines; more specically, the author
takes account of the role of ignorance in theories of social
action and in theories of knowledge and science studies. After
outlining how ignorance has been reected as strategic resource
in organizational contexts, some recent developments in
agnotology and in the sociology of ignorance are considered.
Ignorance and Kindred Concepts
Ignorance and related concepts form an important phenom-
enon in several neighbor disciplines of the social and behav-
ioral sciences. Think of Freuds unconscious as path-breaking
notion in psychology and cognitive science till today: He
coined the term in trying to understand which type of
nonconscious knowledge is involved in forgetting a word,
producing a linguistic lapse, or understanding a joke (Freud,
1901). Ignorance is close to terms such as oblivion, secrecy,
censorship, and taboo as well, which were so central in the
works of some social anthropologists (Douglas, 1966).
Complex relationships between ignorance and actors rational
choices are reected in economics, where incomplete knowl-
edge and asymmetric information embodied in situations of
interdependent decision making creates dilemmas and
opportunities for strategic action (Schelling, 1960). In political
science, the role of discretion for bureaucratic autonomy has
been a topic in discussing how politicians make use of laws to
shape the policy process (Huber and Shapin, 2002). In
philosophy, skeptical reasoning about knowledge resulted in
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 11
critically articulating a remarkable amount of ignorance
implied in ordinary language (Unger, 1975). In political
theory, the concept veil of ignorance has been used in
a thought experiment for granting fair, unanimous decisions,
assuming that in a ctional situation of decision making,
rational actors reasoning on social order would be oriented
toward what anyone would wish, do, or agree with, under the
condition that actors would not know about their own social
position in it (Rawls, 1971). In science and technology studies,
the assessment of more expectable, calculable risks has given
rise to accounting for ignorance as well, while kindred uncer-
tainty has been understood as a subbranch of it (Smithson,
1989: p. 9). According to Michael Smithsons taxonomy,
ignorance is related both to relevance and error, the latter
indicating distortions or incompleteness in knowledge; in the
formal sciences, incompleteness is reected in terms of
absence, ambiguity, probability, vagueness, fuzziness, and
nonspecicity (Smithson, 1989: p. 9). Bearing on ignorance as
a social scientic concept, distinctions such as structural
(Moore and Tumin, 1949), specied (Merton, 1987), science
based (Ravetz, 1987), or strategic ignorance (McGoey, 2012)
have been suggested. Recently, Andrew Abbott has focused on
the need to specify the quality of ignorance one is subject to in
order to enjoy the positive function of several varieties of
ignorance (Abbott, 2010). Investigating ignorance as manifest
in different sources of scientic knowledge, he has drawn
a distinction between three types of ignorance connected with
corresponding actor groups involved in knowledge production:
the amateurs ignorance of central cognitive skills, the
professionals ignorance of collateral literature, and the
experts synthetic ignorance of facts, as an inability to perceive
them other than in the light of ones own paradigm or theory
(Abbott, 2010). While most social scientic approaches toward
understanding ignorance were independently developed by
individual scholars, in the following the author discusses some
of them either as part of social theories of action or within the
frame of a sociology of knowledge.
Ignorance in Theories of Social Action
Very often in life, one takes action on the basis of rather little
knowledge, concerning both structural conditions and conse-
quences of ones activities. Ignorance affects ones capacities to
act in a social structure constraining ones choices; it is also
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.03088-9 579
580 Ignorance, History of Concept
bound to unknown effects, contingent outcomes, and unan-
ticipated consequences of action, in contrast to calculable risks,
controllable effects, and desirable aims. Different schools or
paradigms of social theory have found divergent answers to
how ignorance is related to social action, and mostly they have
dealt with it as a rather implicit issue of concern (Schneider,
1962; Gross, 2007). As Louis Schneider (1962) has shown,
the classics of social theory have reected ignorance mainly in
terms of mystication and in sharp contrast to notions of
enlightenment, truth, and knowledge; While Marxism and in
part Karl Mannheims sociology of knowledge focused on the
cognitive distortion of scientic truth by false consciousness
and ideology, Max Weber regarded science as a way of
demystifying the magic ignorance of the world by intellectu-
alization and rationalization (Louis Schneider, 1962). In
contrast to the savage who knows incomparably more about
his tools, although for whom magical powers existed as well,
today one usually does not have much knowledge about, but
rather count on, the behavior of technical means such as the
streetcar, believing that one can, in principle, master all things
by calculation (Weber, 1917/1919: p. 87). Georg Simmel re-
ected ignorance as part of an increasing discrepancy of
objective and subjective culture; as one of few classical sociol-
ogists, he dealt with ignorance as inevitable part of the secrecy
inherent in social relations (Simmel, 1908).
Wilbert E. Moore and Melvin Tumin (1949) acknowledged
the inescapable character of ignorance intrinsic to social orga-
nization with the aim of examining its structural functions in
varying institutional contexts. According to them, one function
of ignorance is maintaining privilege in asymmetric power
relations as between lays and experts, specialists and potential
competitors, and in ethnic and class stereotyping as well. As
specic kind of institutionalized ignorance they mentioned the
case where ignorance of future chances is institutionally used
as a device to create anxieties and spur activity in a competitive
system such that a worker is expected to be motivated by his
insecurity (Moore and Tumin, 1949: pp. 793f.). However,
they also acknowledged institutions ignorance of an individ-
uals irrelevant personal characteristics as precondition for
preserving fair competition, for instance, in recruitment by
bureaucratic organizations or in peer review procedures of
science. Apart from that, the attractiveness of any new experi-
ence in life depends on ones ignorance or uncertainty of its
outcome (Moore and Tumin, 1949: pp. 793f.). Robert K.
Merton is one of the most important theorists focusing on the
role of ignorance in social action: in discussing unanticipated
consequences of purposeful action (Merton, 1936), in reect-
ing the role of serendipity (Merton and Barber, 2004), and
specied ignorance in scientic progress (Merton, 1987). John Ravetz (1987) who developed a similar thesis in talking
Unanticipated consequences may arise through the limited
knowledge about bases of social action and a correct antici-
pation of its consequences. As barriers to correct anticipation,
Merton mentioned not only ignorance, but also error, impe-
rious immediacy of interest, basic values, and self-defeating
prediction (Merton, 1936). Moreover, he dealt with the role
of ignorance in the dynamics of scientic discovery and in the
relationship between empirical research and sociological
theory, as indicated by the serendipity pattern in science,
designating the fairly common experience of observing an
unanticipated, anomalous and strategic datum which becomes
the occasion for developing a new theory or for extending an
existing theory (Merton, 1957: p. 104).
Symbolic interactionists and phenomenological sociolo-
gists have produced interesting accounts of ignorance as well
(Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Schtz and Luckmann, 1973).
Underscoring the idea that social interaction and communi-
cation are made possible by actors sharing a stock of knowl-
edge, meanings of signicant symbols, and negotiated
denitions of situation, they also have mentioned structures of
ignorance as part of relative or even fundamental opacities in
everyday life and as potential knowledge (Schtz and
Luckmann, 1973). However, the empirical case of nonshared
experience and asymmetries in knowledge seems to posit an
analytical problem for phenomenological approaches
(Smithson, 1989: p. 235). In contrast to that, Erving Goffmans
(1959) metaphor of the backstage accounts for the fact that
some types of social interaction are only possible when social
actors are at least partially ignorant of others intentions.
Ethnomethodologists (Garnkel, 1967) and social construc-
tivists tried to explicate actors practical competencies of taking
action in everyday life, underscoring its nondiscursive, tacit
dimension (Polanyi, 1966) as precondition for successfully
accomplishing it. Thus, they regarded ignorance as basic char-
acteristic of microsocial interaction and of social reality in
general.
Ignorance in Theories of Knowledge
Similar to his distinction of manifest and latent functions of
social action, Merton (1987) has characterized ignorances
function in science as a social institution, drawing on the
importance of its recognition that turns formerly unrecognized
then to specied ignorance. Contrary to the normative
expectation that an individual scientist shows humility through
confessing ignorance by acknowledging ones knowledge
limitations, Merton claried the cognitive value of specifying
what exactly is not known: According to him, specication
of ignorance precedes scientic problem nding, a process of
selectively perceiving complex phenomena in a dialectic of
awareness of some and negligence of other aspects (Merton,
1987: p. 8). He illustrated that practice by discussing succes-
sive stages of theory development in the sociology of deviance
from the 1920s onward. Moreover, he was interested in
whether scientic disciplines differ in their extent of routinely
specied ignorance and how this affects the growth of knowl-
edge in these (Merton, 1987: p. 8). At quite the same time, the
term science-based ignorance has been coined by philosopher
about relevant, usable forms of nonknowledge.
The classical paradigm of the sociology of knowledge,
formulated by Karl Marx and Karl Mannheim and specied by
Merton, focuses on the relationship of cognitive or mental
productions to designated existential bases as given by social
structure. In trying to articulate a parallel paradigm for the
sociology of nonknowledge, David Weinstein and Michael
Weinstein asked why and how people exclude certain cogni-
tions and judgments from their awareness (Weinstein and
Weinstein, 1978: p. 152). They dened their suggested meta-
theory in terms of ground (epistemologies or general theories

of knowledge), resultant (types of actors nonknowledge
involved), and an intervening process between both, in which
the distorted or inadequate cognition arises (Weinstein and
Weinstein, 1978: p. 154). Concerning the epistemological
ground dimension for nonknowledge, they made a distinction
between need-grounded and possibility-grounded concep-
tions of nonknowledge, the rst term indicating universal
motivators of social action, the second term bearing upon not
necessarily universalistic options, purposes, and goals of
human action. Resultant types of nonknowledge they inter-
preted in analogy to these types of grounds, as need-grounded
misinterpretations, on a continuum ranging from falsication
to distortion presupposing some knowable true description of
social life, versus possibility-grounded inattentions, neglect,
and inadvertence, assuming a standard eld of possibilities
rather than only one true description of a situation. The
dynamic component of the suggested paradigm referred to a
process through which mistaken cognition or inattention takes
place (Weinstein and Weinstein, 1978: p. 156); as examples of
explaining mistaken cognition or the narrowing of possible
alternatives, Freudian ego-defense mechanisms or social sanc-
tions in structural-functionalism were given. Although in
Weinstein and Weinsteins variegation of the Mertonian para-
digm for the sociology of knowledge particularly the concep-
tualization of knowledge bases is confusing, it becomes
apparent that the sociology of nonknowledge proposed shall
not restrict itself to institutional analyses of social structure but
to directly make judgments on the meaningfulness of non-
knowledges cognitive content (Weinstein and Weinstein,
1978: p. 159).
The authors explicit cognitive interest and their strong focus
on describing ubiquitous processes of not-knowing character-
izes more recent constructivist sociology of scientic ignorance
as well. For instance, Karin Knorr-Cetina (1981) emphasized
that knowledge and ignorance, and the criteria by which they
are established, are socially constructed in interaction
processes and negotiations among actors that are highly
contingent, contextually and situationally determined, and to
a large extent dependent on the tacit, inexplicable, and implicit
character of practical know-how. The interest in the formal
structure of that social fabric has inspired lots of empirical
studies on knowledge production in microsocial scientic
contexts such as laboratories. Within the wide range of the
sociology of knowledge, the implied epistemological relativism
of that position remains questionable; in addition, the focus on
local practices of knowledge production often neglects the
inuence of institutional contexts and communal procedures
of knowledge evaluation on what counts as knowledge. From
the perspective of an institutionalist sociology of the sciences,
Richard Whitley (1984) has dealt with the question of how
ignorance, uncertainty, and the organization of scientic elds
affect one another, distinguishing between technical versus
strategic uncertainty. While the former refers to scientists
disagreement on the reliability and understanding of research
techniques, strategic uncertainty indicates disagreement about
and pluralism of intellectual priorities, signicance, and ways
of tackling research problems. According to Whitley, high
technical uncertainty usually entails high strategic uncertainty,
but the reverse does not generally hold. Since one of igno-
rances most important aspects refers to its function in
Ignorance, History of Concept 581
institutional contexts, here the author takes a short digression
accounting for the role of ignorance and its strategic uses as
a resource in organizations.
Strategic Ignorance as an Organizational Source
When Schneider (1962) has particularly drawn attention on
structural functionalisms usefulness for analyzing the func-
tions of ignorance in institutional contexts, he did so by
developing what Abbott (2010: p. 186) later has called
a liberating view on ignorance: aiming at specifying those
conditions where ignorance might lead to positive, more
democratic results. Apart from taking ignorances protective
function exercised in the context of immediate interaction, or
its consequences for specic persons in a situational interaction
context into account, like in parentchild interaction or
a physicianpatient relationship, Schneider thought of more
institutionalized examples of ignorances consequences for
a wider social structure. Thus, he mentioned Burton Clarks
(1960) discovery of the cooling out function of higher
education institutions, as informal practices of discouraging
and adjusting students expectations toward aspiring less
ambitious goals, and Peter Blaus (1955) study on social
dynamics in bureaucratic institutions, in which gain through
indirection, as one form of ignorance, is often an implicit
practice of concern. In his study, Blau outlined how institu-
tional requirements can be reached by bureaucratic mecha-
nisms neutralizing possible bias of actors that, unwittingly or
not, might inuence decision-making practices by prejudices
against minorities. In functional terms, a social pattern with
the latent function of impartiality, statistical records, was more
effective than a different pattern with the same manifest func-
tion, antidiscrimination rules. Since latent function is dened
as an unintended consequence, the concept implies that the
social behavior involved is motivated by factors other than the
function under consideration (Blau, 1955: p. 81). To this
insight Schneider added the relevance of ignorance involved,
conditioning more effective, nondiscriminatory placements,
when bureaucratic actors simply did not know that their
action was bringing those things about (Schneider, 1962: p.
501).
In the sociological study of organizations, ignorance has
been considered as fundamental resource of any bargaining
relationship between strategic actors, characterizing social
power as their structural capacity to act by controlling zones of
uncertainty (Crozier and Friedberg, 1977). James March and
Herbert Simon identied organizational norms for dealing
with ignorance and uncertainties, anomalies, and risk, in con-
structing a self-conrming environment by absorbing partic-
ular questions, inquiries, or communications about these
(March and Simon, 1958). Taking the organized anarchy of
decision making at the university as an empirical example,
Michael Cohen et al. (1972) formulated their garbage can
model of organizational choice. The authors underlined that
under conditions of uncertainty, indicated by unclear tech-
nology, uid participation, and problematic preferences,
decision-making practices in organizations are more complex
than suggested by classical analyses of rational action in these
structural contexts. Rather, they suggested conceiving these as
582 Ignorance, History of Concept
contingent outcomes of four intersecting variables: a stream of
choice, of problems, of energy from participants, and a rate of
ow of solutions. Although Smithsons attempt to reconcile
formal with social and behavioral sciences sometimes appear
as rather abstract analysis, those interested in further research
on ignorance in organizational research may nd useful hints
there (Smithson, 1989: pp. 239ff.).
Similar to these early ndings in the sociology of organiza-
tions, recent science and technology studies have attempted to
identify organizational strategies for constructing ignorance by
the denial, dismissal, diversion, and displacement of uncom-
fortable knowledge (Rayner, 2012) in tension or outright
contradiction with self-consistent institutional denitions of
situations. Linsey McGoey (2012) has investigated the strategic
use of ignorance as part of organizational pressures where
organizations members seek to preserve and cultivate igno-
rance rather than to dispel it. She has analyzed strategies how
members mobilize strategic unknowns of a situation as a tool of
social control, command of resources, denial of liability, and
assertion of expert control in the face of unpredictable
outcomes. In contrast to Abbotts (2010) emphasis on different
qualities of ignorance, and complementary to his remark that
scholarly practices of articulating knowledge claims are
accompanied by those of acknowledging ignorance, McGoey
underscored the need to take scales of ignorance into account
in order to recognize its value as an organizational resource:
(S)trategic ignorance is often more institutionally advanta-
geous the more widely it is individually mobilized . because
of the shared willingness of individuals to band together in
dismissing unsettling knowledge (McGoey, 2012: p. 570).
Agnotology and the Current Sociology of Ignorance
In public debates on science and technology, for a long time
ignorance has mainly been considered as the lays counterpart
in relation to an experts knowledge. Since the 1970s, however,
both new social movements critique of technological risks and
endogenous developments in science studies have contributed
to an emerging view of ignorance as inherent part of scientic
development (Wehling, 2001: p. 470). Meanwhile, social
scientic research on ignorance has rapidly grown to an inter-
disciplinary research eld, agnotology, with the explicit
intention to establish scientic accounts of formerly unrecog-
nized knowledge (Proctor and Schiebinger, 2008). It is
constantly fed by an abundance of empirical studies, many of
them inspired by a constructionist sociology of knowledge.
These have analyzed the emergence, discovery and conse-
quences of scientic ignorance, like in human genetics and
biotechnology, in public incidents with substances like chlo-
rouorocarbons, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, and dioxin,
or consequences of new technologies (for instance, Bschen
et al., 2010). In addition, one can recognize an increasing
interest in the societal dimensions of ignorance as inevitable
part of modern knowledge societies (Luhmann, 1992; Ungar,
2008). Three aspects of these rather recent developments in
a sociology of ignorance shall be considered here: the knowl-
edgeignorance paradox, the right not to know, and different
epistemic cultures of nonknowledge as dimensions of an
increasing politicization of ignorance.
Particularly, Ungar has characterized a so-called knowl-
edgeignorance paradox evolving from contradictory dynamics
of knowledge societies and its consequences as well. He
indicated that, as inevitable by-product of the specialization
pressures modern knowledge workers are subject to, their
production of more specialized knowledge results in more
general ignorance as well, entailing increasing entry costs and
speech barriers to other knowledge domains (Ungar, 2008).
The shifting balance between personal expertise and common
knowledge goes hand in hand with an increased reluctance to
pursue additional information and a concomitant decline in
the stock of general knowledge (Ungar, 2008: p. 312).
Focusing on functional knowledge decits as cases where
ignorance denitely is no bliss, Ungar also identied chains of
ignorance, presumably consequential classes of ignorance that
would require reversals throughout these chains in order to
critically combat an overall debasement of public discourse
(Ungar, 2008: p. 314). As part of the marketing of ignorance
as a social problem, particularly successful in coalescence
with social movements or moral panics, he identied claims
referring to embedded ignorance found in specialty domains,
ignorance of medical information, and the special kind of
ignorance of the young; young people as a group are more often
than others targeted by do not die for ignorance actions, like in
antitobacco campaigns, with signicant moral undertones; as
Ungar remarked, similar to the case of medical ignorance, the
problem of ignorance here is often secondary to the real social
problem. Ungars interest in the societal dimension of igno-
rance within knowledge societies could fruitfully be deepened
by future research taking the social stratication of access to
knowledge, and nonknowledge, into account.
However, one can also imagine potential situations in
which ignorance indeed may be bliss. Both predictive genetic
testing and genetic engineering of children indicate areas where
it might not only be better not to know (Ungar, 2008: p. 314),
but where there also exists the explicit right not to know
(Chadwick et al., 1997). Ungar described that although efforts
to purposively shelter ignorance for moral reasons may be
largely doomed to failure, revelations of uncertainties poten-
tially undermining the authority of science become more
commonplace as well. Parallel to scientic progress in human
medicine, genetics, and biotechnology, public discourses on
the right not to know have emerged because of its preventive
function (Popitz, 1968) from taking action, for instance, in the
birth of a child with possible disorder. Seen from the formal
structure of the argument, a right not to know might entail
some similarities to that liberal view on ignorance encoun-
tered above, insofar it builds on the opportunity of nondis-
criminatory effects of social action mechanisms implying
nonknowledge. From a sociological perspective, the challenge
of the debate lies in the array of implications of that fragile
judicial construct for the role of actors, professionals, and the
media in societies usually taking a positive stance toward
knowledge (Levitt, 1997). Actors, expected to take responsi-
bility for their health and those of their children, in reality do
have limited opportunities and resources to exercise choice and
be in control of their lives; thus, it is unsurprising that the topic
arises as the technology to predict risks for individuals runs
ahead of both available treatments and the human ability to
cope with such knowledge (Levitt, 1997: p. 35).

Based on a broad study on the role of ignorance in various
scientic disciplines, and discussing two empirical cases in
greater detail, Stefan Bschen et al. (2010: pp. 790f.) identied
three different epistemic cultures of nonknowledge as equally
valid, rational ways of dealing with nonknowledge: oriented
toward control, toward complexity, or toward case-based
experience. They characterized the control-oriented approach
toward nonknowledge by an epistemic focus on controlling
experimental conditions and avoiding disruptive factors, like in
molecular biology. In contrast, in ecology they identied
a complexity-oriented culture that obtained a high degree of
openness toward unanticipated events and uncontrollable,
context-sensitive settings. The remaining culture of non-
knowledge concentrating on single case-based experience has
been developed in professional expertise such as in medical
case histories, characterized by a low degree of decontextuali-
zation and a tendency to dene nonknowledge as problem of
an individual expert. The authors suggested that a full recog-
nition of diverse cultures of nonknowledge is required as
prerequisite for socially legitimate, robust decision- making
under conditions of politicized scientic nonknowledge
(Bschen et al., 2010).
While the increasing politicization of scientic non-
knowledge is an interesting topic for the sociology of science in
its own right, the broader recognition of ignorance both as part
of structural conditions of social action and of human
knowledge processes enhances social sciences efforts to cope
with what is necessarily implied in advancing the growth of
knowledge.
See also: Afrocentric Approaches to Social Work; Function-
alism, History of; Game Theory; Knowledge Society, History of;
Science and Technology Studies, History of; Unconscious:
History of the Concept; Unintended Consequences: History of
the Concept.
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