Ignorance: A Global History

It is true that behind every human error lurks the long shadow of ignorance. Every mistake, every misjudgement, every omission can be traced to the ignorance of a crucial factor that led to the mishap. So how would ignorance form the subject of a book – and a scholarly one that runs into 258 pages? Peter Burke is a historian. Historians learn from the mistakes of the past. This is his book that traverses a wide range of topics and subjects – from the South Sea Bubble burst to the ignorance of things exposed by Wikileaks, Ellsberg, and Snowden; and to how colonisers rule ‘in ignorance’ over people who ‘followed in blindness’. There is, in truth, a lot more we do not know, but the more we know the more knowledge we have to be ‘intelligently ignorant’. In short, there is something in this book for everyone.

Although Susan Haak wrote, “Rubbish is rubbish, but the history of rubbish is scholarship”, I think even she would like this treatise on ignorance. The opening chapter provides an engaging overview while subsequent chapters illustrate the themes using concrete examples. The effect varies, as the overlap of ignorance with credulity, uncertainty and strategic deception creates vague boundaries. A section that covers what might be deemed military ignorance (the converse of the oxymoron, military intelligence) for example, is not terribly novel and, many other examples in the book are well known case studies in human folly. Nonetheless, the book provides insight into science, big government, business and religion. Has the interent reduced ignorance? To paraphrase Churchill: Never in the history of humankind has so much of the remedy (for ignorance) been so available to so many and yet sought by so few. The problem of information overload is a recurring theme, as suggested by Maria von Ebner Eschenbach: “No one knows enough, many know too much.” Recommended.

Peter Burke has written several invaluable books on the history of knowledge and particularly on its social dimension. This book is exceptionally erudite, illuminating, and well written. There are very few such books on ignorance in English and now there is one!!! As a teacher of knowledge it is wonderful to have such a book on non-knowledge i.e ignorance. which is surely rampant through out the world

This is NOT a read for a political conservative. The author is obviously a leftist who has disdain for the USA and the benefits of our society. I was unable to get past the first fifty pages.

genial

This is a rich historical account offering a wealth of illustrations and examples of ignorance. The wide panorama across ages and various thematic fields (like science, business, politics, religion, war ...), however, didn't really contribute to a conceptual clarification of the key notion. Social phenomena as diverse as stock market crashes, anti-semitism or lost battles are indiscriminately portrayed as results of ignorance - plain and simple. And to frame Trump and Bolsonaro simply in terms of ignorance, seems to miss the point. All the social and political processes of producing, reinforcing, leveraging, denying, opposing ... ignorance are not really brought into focus. Ignorance and knowledge are conceived in a binary fashion of two mutually exclusive and static states of mind. Although the author touches upon these issues, the relations between ignorance on the one hand, risk-taking (at the stock market), discrimination (based on religion), demagogy (Trump) or fundamental uncertainty (in the battlefield), on the other, are not really explored in a systematic fashion. I am richer in anecdotes and vignettes, less so in terms of a more systematic understanding of ignorance.