Renewable Revolution

Edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger

What don't we know, and why don't we know it? What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? Agnotology—the study of ignorance—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?

The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Doubt is our product" is the tobacco industry slogan).


Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of

֍ global climate change,

֍ military secrecy,

֍ female orgasm,

֍ environmental denialism,

֍ Native American paleontology,

֍ theoretical archaeology,

֍ racial ignorance,

֍ and more.

The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible.

About the author

Robert N. Proctor is Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University and the author of The Nazi War on Cancer (1999) and Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know (1995). Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science and the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Her recent books include Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (2004) and Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering (forthcoming from Stanford).
http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=11232


Two quotes from this book that are popular (found in several other books):

Page 86 - IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue.‎
Appears in 66 books from 1969-2008

Page 104 - All scientific work is incomplete — whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time.‎
Appears in 62 books from 1950-2008

http://books.google.com/books?id=qp7rKT56fw0C&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

Agelbert NOTICE: This is one of six posts I will make over the next several days on Agnotology, as excerpted from the excellent book I posted about above.

The purpose is to educate you on how TPTB game us. Feel free to pass these posts on to any naïve friends or family.  People who don't like the mushroom 🍄 treatment need to know how little access to historical truth and scientifically accurate information we actually have in this country. 


IOW, for centuries, TPTB have had a HABIT of lying both actively and PASSIVELY (keeping information from you!). This has corrupted our culture and impeded scientific progress. It's getting WORSE, not better.   


Agnotology: Part two of six parts

Agnotology: Part three of six parts

Agnotology: Part four of six parts

Agnotology: Part five of six parts

Agnotology: Part six of six parts