The Systemic Nature of Knowledge and Ignorance

Why am I interested in this area?• My own marginality provides the context for such

interest and investigations.– Working class, but aspiring to upward mobility.– Educationally marginal.– A Christian at the margins – is that were we should be? Or in

the commanding heights - at the controls, as in Christendom?– Marginal provincial university.– New and marginal graduate course.– Post graduate marginal research into a marginal subject.– Marginal research methodology.– Part of a cohort of students who were marginalised by the

Thatcher Revolution.– Marginalised at work– Am I getting to like it here/there?

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Why should YOU be interested in this area?

• Underdeveloped.• Alternative academic agenda?• Pursuit of the Epistemology and Phenomenology of

Knowledge AND Ignorance.• Ontological Ignorance?• Certainty – probability – uncertainty – ignorance.• Worldviews and Paradigms – direct and focus on what to

know (and what to ignore).• Systems of domination and subordination also direct our

gaze in particular directions.

Are there any Historical Precedents?

• Socrates – know thyself, especially the limits of your knowledge. Knowing your

own ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.• Francis Bacon – The New Organon (1620) Idols of the Tribe,

Cave, Marketplace and Theatre.

• My post-graduate work 1981-85 Marginality, Stigma and Conversion in the context of medical knowledge, professional practices and occupational interests: a case study of Professional Homeopathy in 19th century Britain and the United States.

• CSC Papers 2002 - Knowledge Work(ers): A case study of the implications of Human Resource Management ideas for knowledge workers in a front line client services implementation team.

• Michael H Zack (1999) Managing Organisational Ignorance

• Jerry Ravetz (2007) The No-Nonsense Guide to Science

An Observation• It’s often by digging around at

the margins of the history and sociology of long standing, taken-for-granted institutions, occupations, political parties, and academic disciplines and the like that some rather interesting problematics emerge regarding their normativity and the existence of and our access to the various discourses and metanarratives of knowledge, especially when seen in the context of the asymmetric nature of the organisation of power.

Thank You for Listening