Topic: Knowing our Ignorance

Sources:

The Map of Ignorance (Ann Kerwin 1983, 1992)

The Map of Knowledge (Cohen 1994)

See also http://www.uasv.arizona.edu/Reaching_Out/FieldStudies/ofs_question.html

Text: handout

Lesson Plan: Seek relevant definitions. We defined Ignorance as the absence of knowledge.

Help the class move down the grid discussing ways of classifying knowledge into content categories. A possible grid:

common knowledge	personal knowledge
academic knowledge	group knowledge.

But these overlap at times; that "we" means mankind in general; that everyone has different amounts of knowledge and access to knowledge.

This same classification could be used to classify our ignorance too.

Observe that other kinds of classifications could be made: where knowledge is stored e.g., in people's computers, books records, etc. or in memories; or by the methods of getting knowledge (e.g., religion) or the domains of knowledge (e.g., categories of sciences).

Observe that like 'survival of the fittest', new knowledge replaces the old; whether the old is just shelved or fades away or overlaid. Knowledge is always growing; knowledge is always tentative; there can be mistakes (flat earth); and that knowledge could be reinvented (lost masonry crafts).

Attitude: We do not know everything; and that no one person knows everything. Discuss whether it is better to know the limits of our knowledge and whether we can know the limits of our knowledge.

If we did know them, would we be stimulated to learn more anyway?

The third quadrant is how would we get to know what we do not know? Yes, there are things we know we do not yet know like the cure for aids and cancer, and we do not know the secret formula of Coca Cola, or how many stars or galaxies there are in the universe. Yet some things are not knowable in themselves e.g, square circles because they are contradictions.

Go on to consider the fourth quadrant: what we refuse to know.

Now write your philosophy journal entry here and paste it into your journal book.

Through discussion find examples for the maps:

What we think we know that we don't know (the "facts" that are found to be wrong)	What we think we don't know that we do know (tacit knowledge)
What we deny or refuse to look at	What we need to know

Source: Ann Kerwin (1983) adapted Smith & Joseph 1994

Ann Kerwin is Professor at Arizona University Medical School

From the Fifth International Thinking Conference in Townsville, Australia in 1992, Ann Kerwin, a philosophy professor at University of Arizona Medical School.

See also: Cohen, LeoNora Mapping the domains of ignorance and knowledge in gifted education Roeper Review, Vol. 18, 02-01-1996, pp 183.

 

 

A Map of the Domains of Knowledge

Things we think we know through practice	Things we think we know through intuition
Things we think we know through theory	Things we think we know through cross-cultural experience or from other fields

 (C) 1994 by LeoNora Cohen

 

Things we think we know through research

Things we think we know well--	Things we think we know a little--
Things we think we know some-	Things we get mixed signals about--

Source: Cohen, LeoNora, Mapping the domains of ignorance and knowledge in gifted education.., Vol. 18, Roeper Review, 02-01-1996, pp 183.

LeoNora Cohen is associate professor, School of Education, Oregon State University and founder of the Conceptual Foundations Division of NAGC.

L-N Cohen was Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education University of Melbourne Australia unti 1995.  

 

For extension, see also a discussion of Parmenides

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This page: http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/grid_of_knowing.html

Page constructed by G Smith 1998. Revised 3/5/2000, 5/7/01.