14. The discovery of Ignorance (part 1.)

This chapter is the first chapter of the part 4, the scientific revolution, of this book. It is a long chapter, going through the origin of science, comparing the view of knowledge in ancient and modern times, explaining what science is doing and elucidating the relationship between science, technology, politics…

I believe the author put those content in the first chapter is to lay down the foundation for further discussion of the human history in the dimension of scientific endeavor. Overall speaking, this chapter is a very fruitful chapter. Let’s review some of the important points in this chapter.

Human in ancient time, have been wondering all the time the phenomena occurring in the nature around them. I would say this natural or inborn curiosity of human being about the nature and universe is the seed of science, of course the way to find the answers to their questions is another thing. Our ancestors put a lot of effort to understand how the nature and universe works, no one would argue about this, tremendous historical record told us this. The author listed three difference between modern science and those traditional knowledge. He pointed out the scientific revolution is not a revolution of knowledge, it is a revolution of ignorance. In other words, the attitude of human towards their own ignorance about the most important questions. The term “the most important questions” do not point to specific questions, from my understanding, the term points to those questions that are important to human in the context when human ask such questions. Then the author contrasted this attitude towards ignorance with that from religious belief perspective. He claimed that various religions asserted that “everything that is important to know about the world was already known” (pp.279).

To me, at least Christianity, including Catholicism, in modern time, do not fully adopt what the author claimed above. Instead, scientific findings about the nature help unlock how the world works and provide assistance in understanding the meaning of the bible text.

Next section is about the way of doing science, the author emphasized that “Modern has no dogma” (pp.283). This is true. There is what we called scientific method, which relies on observation and/or experiment, hypothesis testing, analysis of results, revising hypothesis, experiment again… This cycle keeps going until the experimental results fit the prediction by the theory. Modern science involves mathematics to describe the phenomenon or even make prediction, which is a commonplace in theoretical physics. In nuclear and particle physics, theories predicting the existence of certain fundamental particles are based on past experimental results and mathematical derivation. Mathematics is a powerful tool in modern science, it is the language of science. It allows transfer of knowledge in a precise and concise way, and has predictive power, thanks to the strictly logical mathematical theories laid down by many mathematics giants.