Excerpts from
Encyclopaedia
of Ignorance:
Everything
You Ever Wanted
to Know
About the Unknown",
edited by
Ronald Duncan
and
Miranda Weston-Smith,
a Wallaby Book,
published by
Pocket Books,
New York,
1977,
page ix.
Editorial Preface
Compared to the pond of knowledge, our ignorance remains atlantic.
Indeed the horizon of the unknown recedes as we approach it.
The usual encyclopedia states what we know.
This one contains papers on what we do not know, on matters which lie on the edge of knowledge.
In editing this work we have invited scientists to state what it is they would most like to know, that is, where their curiosity is presently focused.
We found that this approach appealed to them.
The more eminent they were, the more ready to run to us with their ignorance.
As the various disciplines have become increasingly specialized, they have tended to invent a language, or as we found in the computer field, a jargon almost incomprehensible to anybody outside that subject.
We have tried to curtail this parochialism and have aimed this book at the informed layman, though possibly at university level, in the hope that he will be encouraged to read papers outside his own subject.
Clearly, before any problem can be solved, it has to be articulated.
It is possible that one or two of our papers might direct research or stimulate it.
In so far as it succeeds in stating what is unknown the volume will be of use to science historians.
A decade hence many of the problems mentioned in these pages will have been solved.
It could be said that science has to date advanced largely on the elbows and knees of technology.
Even the concept of relativity depended on technology to prove its validity.
In some disciplines we have already reached the point when the Heisenberg principle applies and the observer alters the object observed.
And it may well be in cosmology especially, in our attitudes to space and time, that our concepts are our limiting factor.
Perhaps imagination is a part of our technology?
Perhaps some answers depend on asking the correct question?
Ronald Duncan
Miranda Weston-Smith
Encyclopaedia
of Ignorance:
Everything
You Ever Wanted
to Know
About the Unknown",
edited by
Ronald Duncan
and
Miranda Weston-Smith,
a Wallaby Book,
published by
Pocket Books,
New York,
1977,
page ix.
Editorial Preface
Compared to the pond of knowledge, our ignorance remains atlantic.
Indeed the horizon of the unknown recedes as we approach it.
The usual encyclopedia states what we know.
This one contains papers on what we do not know, on matters which lie on the edge of knowledge.
In editing this work we have invited scientists to state what it is they would most like to know, that is, where their curiosity is presently focused.
We found that this approach appealed to them.
The more eminent they were, the more ready to run to us with their ignorance.
As the various disciplines have become increasingly specialized, they have tended to invent a language, or as we found in the computer field, a jargon almost incomprehensible to anybody outside that subject.
We have tried to curtail this parochialism and have aimed this book at the informed layman, though possibly at university level, in the hope that he will be encouraged to read papers outside his own subject.
Clearly, before any problem can be solved, it has to be articulated.
It is possible that one or two of our papers might direct research or stimulate it.
In so far as it succeeds in stating what is unknown the volume will be of use to science historians.
A decade hence many of the problems mentioned in these pages will have been solved.
It could be said that science has to date advanced largely on the elbows and knees of technology.
Even the concept of relativity depended on technology to prove its validity.
In some disciplines we have already reached the point when the Heisenberg principle applies and the observer alters the object observed.
And it may well be in cosmology especially, in our attitudes to space and time, that our concepts are our limiting factor.
Perhaps imagination is a part of our technology?
Perhaps some answers depend on asking the correct question?
Ronald Duncan
Miranda Weston-Smith
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