THE DISCOVERY OF IGNORANCE

 1500 = 500 million population / Today = 7 billion

 1500 = 250 billion goods and services produce / Today = 60 trillion
 1500 = 13 trillion calories consume per day / Today = 1500 trillion
 Modern Battleship
 Modern Computer
 Large Bank
 Urban setting
 Circumnavigation of the earth = 1522 which took 3 years
 July 20, 1969. Humans landed on the moon – Neil Armstrong
 Discovery of Microorganisms = 1674 by Anton van Leeuwenhoek
 05:29:45 on 16 July 1945 = first atomic bomb
 During this revolution humankind has obtained enormous new powers by investing resources in
scientiɹc research
 Humans increasingly came to believe that they could increase their capabilities by investing in
scientiɹc research
 Resources – Research – Power
 The Scientific Revolution’s feedback loop. Science needs more than just research to make
progress. It depends on the mutual reinforcement of science, politics and economics. Political
and economic institutions provide the resources without which scientific research is almost
impossible. In return, scientific research provides new powers that are used, among other
things, to obtain new resources, some of which are reinvested in research.

IGNORAMUS

 The willingness to admit ignorance.

- ignoramus means “We do not know”
 The centrality of observation and mathematics
- It does so by gathering observations and then using mathematical tools to connect these
observations into comprehensive theories.
 The acquisition of new powers.
 Ancient traditions of knowledge admitted only two kinds of ignorance.
1. individual might be ignorant of something important. Ask somebody wiser
2. Entire tradition might be ignorant of unimportant things.
 Modern-day science is a unique tradition of knowledge, inasmuch as it openly admits collective
ignorance regarding the most important questions.
