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CHN Colleagues Contribute to New Book on Ignorance

December 10th, 2008

Ignorance_Book_CoverThe University of Kentucky Press has published a new volume entitled The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge, edited by Bill Vitek and Wes Jackson. The book includes essays by CHN Founding President Strachan Donnelley (”The Path of Enlightened Ignorance: Alfred North Whitehead and Ernst Mayr”), former CHN colleague Paul Heltne (”Imposed Ignorance and Humble Ignorance – Two Worldviews”) as well as CHN Senior Fellow, Peter Brown (”Choosing Ignorance within a Learning Universe”). Bill Vitek was a CHN Senior Fellow during part of the editing of the book and Wes Jackson is an Advisor to the Center. The book offers insight on the advantages of an ignorance-based worldview. According to the Press, the essays “explore the entire realm of this philosophy, from its origins and its essence to how its implementation can preserve vital natural resources for future generations” and the book as a whole “argues that knowledge-based worldviews are more dangerous than useful and looks ahead to determine how humans can live sustainably on Earth.” (http://www.kentuckypress.com/viewbook.cfm?Category_ ID=1&Group=54&ID=1458.) In a review of the book, author Bill McKibben writes, “this is a bid to make ignorance an explicit and powerful underpinning of a new epistemology. It will attract widespread attention and potentially be one of those books that show up in citations for decades to come.”

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