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Author: Patrick Wilson
Publisher: Praeger
Published: 1977-06-22
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An examination of the role of libraries in the utilization of knowledge and in enhancing the informed conduct of life incorporates a review of the goals of library use and library services.
Author: Timur Kuran
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1997-09-30
Total Pages: 444
ISBN-13: 9780674707580
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Preface Living a Lie The Significance of Preference Falsification Private and Public Preferences Private Opinion, Public Opinion The Dynamics of Public Opinion Institutional Sources of Preference Falsification Inhibiting Change Collective Conservatism The Obstinacy of Communism The Ominous Perseverance of the Caste System The Unwanted Spread of Affirmative Action Distorting Knowledge Public Discourse and Private Knowledge The Unthinkable and the Unthought The Caste Ethic of Submission The Blind Spots of Communism The Unfading Specter of White Racism Generating Surprise Unforeseen Political Revolutions The Fall of Communism and Other Sudden Overturns The Hidden Complexities of Social Evolution From Slavery to Affirmative Action Preference Falsification and Social Analysis Notes Index.
Author: Daniel R. Denicola
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2018-09-04
Total Pages: 263
ISBN-13: 026253603X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An exploration of what we can know about what we don't know: why ignorance is more than simply a lack of knowledge. Ignorance is trending. Politicians boast, “I'm not a scientist.” Angry citizens object to a proposed state motto because it is in Latin, and “This is America, not Mexico or Latin America.” Lack of experience, not expertise, becomes a credential. Fake news and repeated falsehoods are accepted and shape firm belief. Ignorance about American government and history is so alarming that the ideal of an informed citizenry now seems quaint. Conspiracy theories and false knowledge thrive. This may be the Information Age, but we do not seem to be well informed. In this book, philosopher Daniel DeNicola explores ignorance—its abundance, its endurance, and its consequences. DeNicola aims to understand ignorance, which seems at first paradoxical. How can the unknown become known—and still be unknown? But he argues that ignorance is more than a lack or a void, and that it has dynamic and complex interactions with knowledge. Taking a broadly philosophical approach, DeNicola examines many forms of ignorance, using the metaphors of ignorance as place, boundary, limit, and horizon. He treats willful ignorance and describes the culture in which ignorance becomes an ideological stance. He discusses the ethics of ignorance, including the right not to know, considers the supposed virtues of ignorance, and concludes that there are situations in which ignorance is morally good. Ignorance is neither pure nor simple. It is both an accusation and a defense (“You are ignorant!” “Yes, but I didn't know!”). Its practical effects range from the inconsequential to the momentous. It is a scourge, but, DeNicola argues daringly, it may also be a refuge, a value, even an accompaniment to virtue.
Author: Ilya Somin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-10-02
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 0804789312
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.
Author: Bidhan Kanti Das
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2024-06-21
Total Pages: 297
ISBN-13: 1040045243
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →What is knowledge, and ignorance? How is it decided? Do power and power relations influence this process? Does the spread of knowledge lead to more ignorance? Is ignorance socially produced? Is knowledge always socially contextualized? This book deals with these important questions on the interplay of knowledge, ignorance and power located in varied contexts in India. As systematic knowledge grows, so does the possibility of ignorance. Ignorance is a state which people attribute to others and is loaded with moral judgment. Thus, being underdeveloped often ‘implies a kind of stupidity or failure’. This volume seeks to be premised in a framework where ignorance is understood as being a socially produced and maintained phenomenon, where the ways of knowing and not knowing are interdependent. It is a novel attempt for an academic re-orientation of the Knowledge–Ignorance paradigm through a process of re-interpretation of the bounded purview attached with the existing epistemological understandings. It focuses on concrete case studies, often with an ethnographic stint. The volume critically looks at various aspects: Epistemological Issues; Understanding Community Perspectives and the State; Natural Resources, Power and Ignorance; Media and Production of Non-Knowledge; and other emerging areas. Each essay bears a striking similarity – that of understanding the complex processes and dynamics of the production of ignorance in a field of commonly held beliefs of 'knowledge' - be it scientific, societal, religious, magical or political - through the overarching realm of power. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to a cross-section of academics and students of sociology, social anthropology, political science, human geography, history, public policy and development studies.
Author: Michael Buckland
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 1991-05-30
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 031339041X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Michael Buckland offers an examination of information systems that is comparative rather than narrowly technical in approach. With careful attention to different meanings of information, Buckland examines the nature of retrieval-based information systems such as archives, databases, libraries, and museums, and their relationships to their social context. The introductory material examines difficulties of definition and terminology in relation to information systems. There is a systematic overview of the concepts and processes involved in the provision and use of information systems. Buckland's attention to unusual examples, to how different aspects interact with each other, and to how information systems are influenced by their contents and their context yields interesting insights and conclusions which force reconsideration of common assumptions in information science. This volume, with its subject index and bibliography, provides for students and professionals a valuable and readable introduction to this rapidly expanding field.
Author: Robert Graef
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2017
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13: 1633883213
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Sums up the many fields of study where ignorance can undermine our understanding, while showing how an awareness of ignorance can lead to exploration and the discovery of new knowledge.The flip side of knowledge is ignorance. This book explores the vast scope of ignorance, even in an age when we think we know more than ever before. By marking off this ocean of ignorance into manageable categories, the author provides a kind of navigational chart to the unknown, and a series of red flags to all those who claim certitude. The book first lays out the many branches of ignorance--in education, the media, politics, religion, science, and other major institutions. It then assesses the costs and consequences of that ignorance. World conflicts, endemic poverty, environmental damage, waste, racism, and the manipulative forces of industry and politics that use propaganda to manipulate the public may all be seen as rooted in ignorance.But there are positive aspects of ignorance as well. Scientists and artists, by recognizing what they don't know, are spurred on to new creative approaches and discoveries, which would never be found by those too comfortable with the tried and true. The author cites Socrates, whom the Delphic Oracle declared to be the wisest of all people simply because he realized how much he didn't know. This book gives you ways to follow in the path that Socrates forged, to counter the closed minds whose false sense of certainty cannot help but distort reality, and to be better prepared to take on even the most serious challenges of today.
Author: Nigel Blake
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-12-06
Total Pages: 255
ISBN-13: 1136370048
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book addresses concerns about educational and moral standards in a world increasingly characterised by nihilism. On the one hand there is widespread anxiety that standards are falling; on the other, new machinery of accountability and inspection to show that they are not. The authors in this book state that we cannot avoid nihilism if we are simply laissez-faire about values, neither can we reduce them to standards of performance, nor must we return to traditional values. They state that we need to create a new set of values based on a critical assessment of contemporary practice in the light of a number of philosophical texts that address the question of nihilism, including the work of Nietzsche.
