Forbidden Knowledge: The Social Construction and Management of Ignorance

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Science has traditionally been billed as our foremost producer of knowledge. For more than a decade, however, science has also been billed as an important source of ignorance, and this aspect of science is now being studied in a new interdisciplinary area of enquiry sometimes called agnotology. In this course we shall explore this new area of ignorance studies and its relation to the knowledge studies of philosophy—epistemology and philosophy of science. Accordingly, readings will be drawn from the work of a broad array of scholars—scientists, historians, journalists, and social critics as well as philosophers.