Within thesociology of knowledge,agnotology (formerlyagnatology) is the study of deliberate, culturally cultivatedignorance ordoubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favour, particularly through the publication of inaccurate or misleadingscientific data (i.e.disinformation).[5][6] More generally, the term includes the condition where more knowledge of a subject creates greater uncertainty.
Stanford University professorRobert N. Proctor cites theTobacco industry playbook tomanufacture doubt about theadverse health effects of tobacco use as a prime example.[7][8]David Dunning ofCornell University warns that powerful interests exploit theinternet to "propagate ignorance".[6]
Active agents of culturally cultivated ignorance includemass media,corporations, and government agencies, operating throughsecrecy andsuppression of information, document destruction, and selective memory.[9] Passive causes include structuralinformation bubbles, such as those produced by racial or class divisions, characterized by limited and selectiveaccess to information. Agnotology also focuses on how and why diverse knowledge doesnot "come to be", or is ignored or delayed. For example, knowledge aboutplate tectonics was censored and delayed for at least a decade because some evidence remainedclassified military information related toundersea warfare.[7]
The availability of large amounts of knowledge may allow people tocherry-pick information (whether factual or not) that reinforces their beliefs,[10] a practice known asconfirmation bias, and ignore inconvenient knowledge by consuming repetitive or fact-free entertainment. Evidence conflicts on how television affects viewers.[11]
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that
"my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge".
The term was coined in 1992 by linguist and social historianIain Boal,[13][5][14][15] at the request ofStanford University professorRobert N. Proctor.[16] The word is based on theNeoclassical Greek wordagnōsis (ἄγνωσις, 'not knowing';cf.Attic Greekἄγνωτος, 'unknown' and-logia (-λογία).[7] The term "agnotology" first appeared in print in a footnote inStanford University professor Proctor's 1995 book,The Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know About Cancer:
Historians and philosophers of science have tended to treat ignorance as an ever-expanding vacuum into which knowledge is sucked – or even, asJohannes Kepler once put it, as the mother who must die forscience to be born. Ignorance, though, is more complex than this. It has a distinct and changing political geography that is often an excellent indicator of the politics of knowledge. We need a political agnotology to complement our political epistemologies.[17]
In a 2001 interview about hislapidary work withagate, Proctor used the term to describe his research "only half jokingly" as "agnotology". He connected the topics by noting the lack ofgeologic knowledge and study of agate since its first known description byTheophrastus in 300 BC, relative to the extensive research on other rocks and minerals such asdiamonds,asbestos,granite, andcoal. He said agate was a "victim of scientific disinterest," the same "structuredapathy" he called "thesocial construction of ignorance".[18] He was later quoted as calling it "agnotology, the study of ignorance," in a 2003The New York Times story on medical historians who testify asexpert witnesses.[19]
In 2004,Londa Schiebinger, an historian and the then new director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG),[20] argued that agnotology questions why humans do not know important information and that it could be an "outcome of cultural and political struggle".[21] In 2004, Schiebinger offered a more precise definition in a paper on 18th-century voyages ofscientific discovery andgender relations,[20] and contrasted it with epistemology, the theory of knowledge, saying that the latter questions how humans know while the former questions why humansdonot know: "Ignorance is often not merely the absence of knowledge but an outcome of cultural and political struggle."[21] Proctor co-organized events with Schiebinger, his wife and fellow professor of science history.[22][9] In 2008, they published an anthology entitledAgnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance which "provides a new theoretical perspective to broaden traditional questions about 'how we know' to ask: Why don't we know what we don't know?" They locate agnotology within the field ofepistemology.[23]
Proctor offers some examples where agnotology may explain instances of unnatural ignorance. These include the lack ofNakba education in the United States[24] and the obscurity ofPenn State's official ties to theUnited States Marine Corps.[24] Thefossil fuel industry used agnotological techniques in itscampaign against thescientific consensus on climate change. It became the focus of the 2010 bookMerchants of Doubt byNaomi Oreskes andErik M. Conway.[25]Oil companies paid teams of scientists to downplay its effects.[26]
Michael Betancourt used agnotology in a critical assessment ofpolitical economy in a 2010 article and book.[27][28] His analysis focused on thehousing bubble as well as the 1980 to 2008 period. Betancourt argued that this political economy should be termed "agnotologic capitalism", claiming that the systematic production and maintenance of ignorance enabled a "bubble economy" that allowed the economy to function.[20] In his view, the role ofaffective labor is to create/maintain agnotologic views that enable the maintenance of thecapitaliststatus quo. This is done by proffering counters to every fact, creating contention and confusion that is difficult to resolve. This confusion reduces dissent by deenergizing its motivating alienation and thus its potential to address weaknesses that may trigger collapse.[27]
From the same Greek roots,agnoiology refers either to "the science or study of ignorance, which determines its quality and conditions"[29] or "the doctrine concerning those things of which we are necessarily ignorant,"[30] describing a branch of philosophy studied byJames Frederick Ferrier in the 19th century.[31]
Anthropologist Glenn Stone points out that some examples of agnotology (such as work promoting tobacco use) do not actually create a lack of knowledge so much as they create confusion. As a more accurate term Stone suggested "ainigmology", from the Greek rootainigma (as in 'enigma'), referring toriddles or to language that obscures the true meaning of a story.[32]
An emerging scientific discipline that connects to agnotology is cognitronics,[33][34] which aims to explain distortions in perception caused by the information society andglobalization and cope with these distortions.[34]
Irvin C. Schick distinguishes unknowledge from ignorance, using the example of "terra incognita" in early maps in which mapmakers marked unexplored territories with that or similar labels, which provided "potential objects of Western political and economic attention."[35]
This is about a society's choice between listening to science and falling prey to what Stanford science historian Robert N. Proctor calls agnotology (the cultural production of ignorance)
Proctor uses the term "agnotology" – a word coined from agnosis, meaning "not knowing" – to describe a new approach to looking at knowledge through the study of ignorance.
Proctor:...Die Tabakindustrie hat ... verlangt, dass mehr geforscht wird. Das ist reine Ablenkungsforschung. Wir untersuchen in Stanford inzwischen, wie Unwissen hergestellt wird. Es ist eine Kunst – wir nennen sie Agnotologie. (Proctor:...The tobacco industry has ... called for further study. That is pure distraction research. At Stanford, we study how ignorance is manufactured. It is an art we call agnotology.)
My hope for devising a new term was to suggest the opposite, namely, the historicity and artifactuality of non-knowing and the non-known-and the potential fruitfulness of studying such things. In 1992, I posed this challenge to the linguist Iain Boal, and it was he who came up with the term agnotology, in the spring of that year.
[Interview with Robert Proctor] 'So I asked a linguist colleague of mine, Iain Boal, if he could coin a term that would designate the production of ignorance and the study of ignorance, and we came up with a number of different possibilities.'
'there is a lot more protectiveness than there used to be,' said Dr. Proctor, who is shaping a new field, the study of ignorance, which he calls agnotology. 'It is often safer not to know.'
Mr. Proctor, who describes his specialty as "agnotology, the study of ignorance", argues that the tobacco industry has tried to give the impression that the hazards of cigarette smoking are still an open question even when the scientific evidence is indisputable. "The tobacco industry is famous for having seen itself as a manufacturer of two different products," he said, "tobacco and doubt".
I develop a methodological tool that historian of science Robert Proctor has called "agnotology"—the study of culturally-induced ignorances—that serves as a counterweight to more traditional concerns for epistemology, refocusing questions about "how we know" to include questions about what we do not know, and why not. Ignorance is often not merely the absence of knowledge but an outcome of the cultural and political struggle.
Science, Medicine, and Technology in Culture Pennsylvania University Presents a Workshop: ... Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, co-organizers
