THE VALUE OF “IGNORANCE” Valentine Obienyem At the risk of being roasted in a pot of ink, let me say it for the umpteenth time: some lawyers, medical doctors, engineers, and others that read one of those professions that people hold in high esteem suffer form a peculiar form of delusion. Often, they think of themselves as a special tribe of men with knowledge hidden from others. How else do we explain their claim to omniscience, exemplified in their opinions about themselves? Some even address one another as “my learned friend or brother”, even those among them who are totally bereft of learning. Induced by this delusion, students studying some of these courses often look down on other students. As a student, I used to hear law, medical and engineering students say in wry humour that only three Faculties existed in their universities: Law or Engineering or Medical Colleges. Let me confess that this and similar bragging by this tribe of men is the immediate provocation of this piece. But are we not digressing from what the subject is supposed to discuss? If some professionals are deluded, some professionals are arrogant, what relationship has that with ascribing value to ignorance? In its very nature, ignorance is utterly despicable. Ignorance means lack of knowledge. In fact, it is ignorance that begets credulity, superstition and occultism. That twins were killed in the past; inquisition, jihads and crusades propagated; human beings sacrificed to propitiate the gods; and other atrocities perpetrated were borne out if ignorance. Lucretius book On Nature mourns man’s misdeeds because of his blind devotion to religion borne, according to him, out of his ignorance of nature. Thus, to ascribe value to ignorance belongs to what philosophy calls “repugnant concept”. Repugnant in the sense that ignorance, which is normally scorned, has been addressed as something that should be valued. Rather than the value of “ignorance”, it makes sense to talk about the value of knowledge, which is self-evident. Knowledge itself, episteme, is a subject of deep philosophical speculation. Epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, deals with what knowledge is and what it is not, the nature of knowledge, whether knowledge is worth getting, different types of knowledge e.t.c, to the everlasting scorn of ignorance. What is to be noted from the foregoing is that human beings value knowledge and are, sometimes, ready to invest heavily to reach its supposed foundations. In the search for knowledge, educational institutions of different classes and inclinations have been founded. What, then, we ask, is the source of knowledge itself, or rather the disposition that encourages the growth of knowledge? This is where the value or otherwise of ignorance comes in. Ignorance has certain value, being a necessary step towards knowledge. It awakens our curiosity to know. The history of philosophy says that man started to philosophise because of his ignorance. In his ignorance, he started wondering about the nature of the cosmos. In his wonderment, he began to ask some questions. This gave birth to philosophy. The great Socrates who still stuns the world by the profundity of his thoughts was said to have claimed ignorance of most things that other mortals would have ordinarily jumped at. In his professed “ignorance”, he suppressed intellectual arrogance, thereby cultivating the right disposition towards the growth of knowledge. Thus, the oracle in Delphi was said to have acclaimed him as the wisest man that had ever lived. The fruit of “ignorance”! When the biblical Solomon was asked to demand a favour from God, he asked for wisdom; the wisdom to be able to discern between good and evil. Implicit in this demand is his acknowledgment of his lack of knowledge, his ignorance, so to speak. It does not mean that Socrates or Solomon was bereft of ordinary “wisdom”, which their contemporaries claimed to have. They exemplified the intellectual humility that man ought to cultivate for learning to flourish. The mind in error claims to know that of which, in fact, it is ignorant. This, as Socrates points out in the Meno, makes it easier to teach a person who is aware of his ignorance than a person who is not. The latter, supposing himself to know, resists the teacher. Hence getting a person to acknowledge his ignorance, his lack of knowledge, is often the indispensable first step in teaching. When you study the disposition of men who made epochal discoveries or who propounded fantastic theories, you will notice that they were not intellectually pompous. They belong to the class that accepted the fact that they knew little, tacit admission of ignorance. In accepting this, they developed and thirst for knowledge, thus contributing to the development of the world. Isaac Newton achieved much in science because he believed that his finite soul was ignorant of the cosmos. In his bid to understand the cosmos he professed to be ignorant of, he contributed his own mite and enriched civilization. Hear his own estimate of his epochal achievements: “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”. Lest you do not yet understand the flow of my thought, the sort of ignorance in my mind is not the crude ignorance that refuses to understand one plus one in this our literate world. Blaise paschal, writing in his Penses, said that there were two kinds of wisdom: that of the simple and “ignorant” multitude, who live by the wisdom of tradition and imagination (ritual and myth). This is the ignorance of those who live inauthentic existence. These are those who do things because others do without a moments’ reflection within themselves. He equally talked of the wisdom of the sage who has pierced through science and philosophy to realize his ignorance. Socrates, Solomon, Paschal, Newton, e.t.c, belong to the latter. When you have realized your ignorance, you will acknowledge your limitations. You will argue any viewpoint bearing in mind the possibility that you could be wrong, especially those views that are open to alternatives. Often, people pass judgments on issues such as reincarnation, the hereafter, and transmigration of the soul, e.t.c, with airs of finality. The real question here seems to be a metaphysical one: Can such a finite soul as ours claim finality about issues on which there exist hundreds view points? The point I want us to note from the foregoing is that our knowledge is moulded and limited by our means and ways of perceiving things. It is locked up in the prison of our minds and it is dangerous for us to pass judgments on ultimate truth about anything. To stop making pretence to omnipotence is part of positive acknowledgment of ignorance that enhances knowledge. We must accept, whatever our position or achievements, that our knowledge may well turn out to be an expanding mirage in the desert of ignorance.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 09:24:00 +0000
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