My personal desire to question deduction’s seduction has motivated my search for the truth in many different places. Although some avenues of inquiry have proffered little, I was excited to find Michael Scroggins’ “Ignoring Ignorance: Notes on Pedagogical Relationships in Citizen Science” in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 3 (2017).
It is high time that we let go of our adoration of “knowledge” and the high price that that form of worship requires and look more honestly and empirically at the world. The following quotation depicts the value that can be gained by problematizing knowledge and ignorance from Scroggins’ refreshingly new angle.
Theoretically, this article seeks to broaden the conceptualization of ignorance within STS by drawing on a line of theory developed in the philosophy and anthropology of education to argue that ignorance can be productively conceptualized as a state of possibility and that doing so can enable more democratic forms of citizen science. In contrast to conceptualizations of ignorance as a lack, lag, or manufactured product, ignorance is developed here as both the opening move in scientific inquiry and the common ground over which that inquiry proceeds.Scroggins 2017
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