The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

March 20Conscious Ignorance

My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.

Henry David Thoreau—“Walking” (1861)

There is a concept in scientific research known as “thoroughly conscious ignorance.” The idea is to remain conscious of the fact that there is a great deal more to know about something and that there is danger in casting your current knowledge as some form of wisdom.

Consider this additional passage from Thoreau's “Walking” for practical context:

Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

We've all likely been on both sides of this equation. From the outside looking in, it's easy to see what thinking we know it all might be costing us.

James Clerk Maxwell, the physicist credited with coining the term, claimed that “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”

Stop looking for answers and focus on the questions that make ...