====== Agnoiology ======

//Agnoiology// is the study of ignorance. More specifically :

>The doctrine of things of which we are necessarily ignorant" [[https://www.jstor.org/stable/27904033|ref.]]{{:oa_padlock_red.png?16}}<sup>[ paywalled ]</sup>

In other words. the opposite of //epistemology// which is the study of knowledge.

Given that human intelligence has limits, and that we have not explored the entire universe, it's a given that the extent of human ignorance is currently unknown.

There are a plethora of reasons why ignorance occurs and persists. Some examples (in no particular order) :

  * lack of resources and/or equipment
  * insufficient previous knowledge to build on
  * incompatible physical scales (too large, too small)
  * incompatible timescales (too short, too long)
  * fear of the unknown ([[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618516300469|example ref.]])
  * cultural pressures (the study of which is known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology|Agnotology]])
  * insufficient intelligence
  * failure to recognise unknown factors ([[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0310216|example ref.]])
  * laziness
  * lack of curiosity

Note that// Agnoiology //also covers subjects which are by their nature [[tag:unknowable|unknowable]]. An example would be trying to definitively classify a growing sequence of numbers as [[content:mathematics:random_numbers|random]] - given that the next digits may start repeating.