Human dependence on technology has increased exponentially over
the past several centuries, and so too has the notion that we can
fix environmental problems with scientific applications. The
Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of
Knowledge proposes an alternative to this hubristic, shortsighted,
and dangerous worldview. The contributors argue that uncritical
faith in scientific knowledge has created many of the problems now
threatening the planet and that our wholesale reliance on
scientific progress is both untenable and myopic. Bill Vitek, Wes
Jackson, and a diverse group of thinkers, including Wendell Berry,
Anna Peterson, and Robert Root-Bernstein, offer profound arguments
for the advantages of an ignorance-based worldview. Their essays
explore this philosophy from numerous perspectives, including its
origins, its essence, and how its implementation can preserve vital
natural resources for posterity. All conclude that we must simply
accept the proposition that our ignorance far exceeds our knowledge
and always will. Rejecting the belief that science and technology
are benignly at the service of society, the authors argue that
recognizing ignorance might be the only path to reliable knowledge.
They also uncover an interesting paradox: knowledge and insight
accumulate fastest in the minds of those who hold an
ignorance-based worldview, for by examining the alternatives to a
technology-based culture, they expand their imaginations.
Demonstrating that knowledge-based worldviews are more dangerous
than useful, The Virtues of Ignorance looks closely at the
relationship between the land and the future generations who will
depend on it. The authors argue that we can never improve upon
nature but that we can, by putting this new perspective to work in
our professional and personal lives, live sustainably on Earth.
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