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.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Anyone who thinks ignorance is nobodys business has a lot to learn from these provocative essays. The distinguished authors offer compelling evidence that what we do not know is every bit as much a product of human choice and ingenuity as what we choose to know. Agnotology rescues ignorance from the no-mans-land of unexamined social phenomena. It makes us ask what is at stake when we dont know things that are plainly before our eyes. This is a book for every thinking citizen."
—Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University
—Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University
"In the past years there have been few new fields of research as timely as agnotology. Many a time one is puzzled by the widespread ignorance of some of the greatest challenges mankind faces today, be it global warming, the way to the Iraq war, or the global tobacco epidemic. Agnotology might very well be the tool to delve into the great black holes of modern knowledge and also find a way out." —Andrian Kreye, arts and ideas editor, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany
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).
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While epistemology is related to the creation and justification of knowledge, agnotology is the study of the mechanisms which lead to the lack of particular knowledge in different cultures. This book answers the question why we don't know, and still more important, why we don't know that we don't know. The book includes brilliant articles covering a relatively large period in history. This is an enormous contribution to a little studied, but exciting, field.
14 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
You always knew that vested interests made sure you got the story they wanted you to hear.Unfortunately,even more examples than you were aware of are out there.Here they are.This book is a good place to start if you want to be even more upset than you already are.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
On the whole, more pain than pleasure. Yes, the subject matter, an attempt to identify and promote a new discipline, is worthy, though this study of the science of ignorance purports to cover so much ground--the corporate denial of scientific data, the legal (and sometimes justifiable) enforcement of secrecy, social support for certain kinds of ignorance--that the concept's viability is called into question. But the book itself is an interesting slant on many recent and historic influences on public consciousness, from the mechanics of sexual arousal, to the tobacco lobby's duplicity, to the ongoing denial of global warming.
It is the level of writing that is atrocious. Maybe I should have waited for the Bill Bryson version, or for anyone who could use these materials to fashion a book that doesn't insult the language and waste one's time. These writers, to a person, are academics, and almost all should be soundly thrashed with a hardbound copy of Strunk & White. This is a compendium of every fault scholarly writing is heir to: wordiness, redundancy, needless complexity of sentence structure (often designed to mask or extend mundane observations), pointless jargon, infelicitous phraseology, obscurantism, even lame humor (as per the double entendres in the essay on the clitoris, by a feminist no less!) that probably plays better in the senior seminar than in a book intended for mature adults. These scholars write as though being paid by the word--and for a nonexistent editor. The book could have been half its length with no sacrifice whatever to the content.
My advice, if you are intent on owning this insult, is to skim or speed-read the essays as fast as possible, gleaning the ideas without having to indulge the authors in their padding and verbal ineptitude.
It is the level of writing that is atrocious. Maybe I should have waited for the Bill Bryson version, or for anyone who could use these materials to fashion a book that doesn't insult the language and waste one's time. These writers, to a person, are academics, and almost all should be soundly thrashed with a hardbound copy of Strunk & White. This is a compendium of every fault scholarly writing is heir to: wordiness, redundancy, needless complexity of sentence structure (often designed to mask or extend mundane observations), pointless jargon, infelicitous phraseology, obscurantism, even lame humor (as per the double entendres in the essay on the clitoris, by a feminist no less!) that probably plays better in the senior seminar than in a book intended for mature adults. These scholars write as though being paid by the word--and for a nonexistent editor. The book could have been half its length with no sacrifice whatever to the content.
My advice, if you are intent on owning this insult, is to skim or speed-read the essays as fast as possible, gleaning the ideas without having to indulge the authors in their padding and verbal ineptitude.
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
(learn more)
fossil legends, chris mooney, epistemic cultures, primate sexuality, fossil knowledge, veritistic epistemology, white ignorance, peacock flower, mastodon fossils, funding effect, beryllium disease, challenging knowledge Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, United States, Marshall Institute, Philip Morris, Cambridge University Press, Native American, Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, Frederick Seitz, Oxford University Press, Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers, Harvard University Press, University of California Press, Basic Books, University of Chicago Press, Fred Singer, Department of Energy, Cold War, Suzann Gage, San Diego, Princeton University Press, Tobacco Institute, Cancer Wars, World War, National Academy of Sciences, New World Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
fossil legends, chris mooney, epistemic cultures, primate sexuality, fossil knowledge, veritistic epistemology, white ignorance, peacock flower, mastodon fossils, funding effect, beryllium disease, challenging knowledge Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, United States, Marshall Institute, Philip Morris, Cambridge University Press, Native American, Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, Frederick Seitz, Oxford University Press, Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers, Harvard University Press, University of California Press, Basic Books, University of Chicago Press, Fred Singer, Department of Energy, Cold War, Suzann Gage, San Diego, Princeton University Press, Tobacco Institute, Cancer Wars, World War, National Academy of Sciences, New World Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
