Ignorance: How It Drives Science and over 1.5 million other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more


or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
Trade in Yours
For a £2.75 Gift Card
Trade in
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Colour:
Image not available

 
Start reading Ignorance: How It Drives Science on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Ignorance: How It Drives Science [Hardcover]

Stuart Firestein
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
Price: £9.59 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £5.40 (36%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 11 left in stock (more on the way).
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Want delivery by Wednesday, 22 May? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition £9.11  
Hardcover £9.59  
Trade In this Item for up to £2.75
Trade in Ignorance: How It Drives Science for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.75, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Learn more

Book Description

19 July 2012 0199828075 978-0199828074
Knowledge is a big subject, says Stuart Firestein, but ignorance is a bigger one. And it is ignorance-not knowledge-that is the true engine of science. Most of us have a false impression of science as a surefire, deliberate, step-by-step method for finding things out and getting things done. In fact, says Firestein, more often than not, science is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, and there may not be a cat in the room. The process is more hit-or-miss than you might imagine, with much stumbling and groping after phantoms. But it is exactly this "not knowing," this puzzling over thorny questions or inexplicable data, that gets researchers into the lab early and keeps them there late, the thing that propels them, the very driving force of science. Firestein shows how scientists use ignorance to program their work, to identify what should be done, what the next steps are, and where they should concentrate their energies. And he includes a catalog of how scientists use ignorance, consciously or unconsciously-a remarkable range of approaches that includes looking for connections to other research, revisiting apparently settled questions, using small questions to get at big ones, and tackling a problem simply out of curiosity. The book concludes with four case histories-in cognitive psychology, theoretical physics, astronomy, and neuroscience-that provide a feel for the nuts and bolts of ignorance, the day-to-day battle that goes on in scientific laboratories and in scientific minds with questions that range from the quotidian to the profound. Turning the conventional idea about science on its head, Ignorance opens a new window on the true nature of research. It is a must-read for anyone curious about science.

Frequently Bought Together

Ignorance: How It Drives Science + It's Not Rocket Science + Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients
Price For All Three: £28.20

Buy the selected items together


Product details

  • Hardcover: 208 pages
  • Publisher: OUP USA (19 July 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0199828075
  • ISBN-13: 978-0199828074
  • Product Dimensions: 13.6 x 2 x 18.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 201,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, and more.

Product Description

Review

A valuable acquisition for academic libraries, given the current emphasis on STEM education and undergraduate research. R. E. Buntrock, CHOICE It is important to emphasize the creative process in the sciences. This is not just another methodological book on the empirical cycle, but an unpretentious and smooth-reading plea for attention on an uncultivated but mineable area. Tijdschrift voor Psychiatrie, Dec 2012 An excellent read, [it is] a fine companion text for potential scientists a the beginning of their studies ... You may gradually become more and more ignorant as you read, and you will enjoy the journey. Ignorance in this telling is truly bliss. Moran Cerf, Science Magazine a quietly mind-blowing new book. Readers Digest Stuart Firestein, a teacher and neuroscientist, has written a splendid and admirably short book about the pleasure of finding things out using the scientific method. He smartly outlines how science works in reality rather than in stereotype. Ignorance is a thoughtful introduction to the nature of knowing, and the joy of curiosity. Adam Rutherford, The Observer A splendid book ... Packed with real examples and deep practical knowledge, Ignorance is a thoughtful introduction to the nature of knowing, and the joy of curiosity. Adam Rutherford, The Observer The fundamental attribute of successful scientists, Firestein argues in this pithy book, is a form of ignorance characterised by knowing what you don't know, and being able to ask the right questions. Culture Lab The book is effectively conversational and can be read quickly, as intended. The American Journal of Epidemiology

About the Author


Stuart Firestein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where his highly popular course on ignorance invites working scientists to come talk to students each week about what they don't know. Dedicated to promoting science to a public audience, he serves as an advisor for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program for the Public Understanding of Science and was awarded the 2011 Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for excellence in scholarship and teaching. Also, he was recently named an AAAS Fellow.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Search inside this book:

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Customer Reviews

3 star
0
2 star
0
1 star
0
4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant (reviewed by a scientist) 10 Aug 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Brilliant. Every other sentence really is an aphorism. And a good one.
Rarely has such a small book weighted so much in my mind. Made me think of zen, for no particular reason but the sparse beauty of each page.
After years of PhD and research, a real tonic. Now back to find some more ignorance...
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Time to get out the matches 16 Nov 2012
By Sphex TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
W. B. Yeats admonished that "education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Stuart Firestein agrees, and in this marvellous book he argues that science is less about accumulating facts and rules and more like looking for "black cats in dark rooms." The scientific process is not a tidy logical procession from one grand truth to the next. It's "mostly stumbling about in the dark", "bumping into unidentifiable things, looking for barely perceptible phantoms". In short, it's about dealing with ignorance.

This isn't the view held by most non-scientists, who for the most part subscribe to the popular image of the scientist as brainy or a boffin, not as a fount of ignorance. It's true that a professional scientist, like any professional, knows an awful lot. Knowing everything is of course impossible, and, anyway, knowing lots of facts "does not automatically make you a scientist, just a geek." Firestein argues that science is different in that the facts "serve mainly to access the ignorance" and to frame new questions. Scientists concentrate on what they don't know, and "science traffics in ignorance, cultivates it, and is driven by it."

Firestein is not talking about ignorance in the pejorative sense. He's interested in "knowledgeable ignorance, perceptive ignorance, insightful ignorance" - the kind that "leads us to frame better questions, the first step to getting better answers." His big claim is that it's "the most important resource" scientists have, and using it correctly is "the most important thing a scientist does."

Scientists love questions. Naturally, we should guard against a simple-minded idea that asking a few questions (especially the so-called "big" ones), any more than knowing a few facts, is all there is to being a scientist. As Michael Lynch warns (In Praise of Reason, page 84), carried to its extreme a sceptic is someone who only questions and never commits, which is no way either to live a life or to do science. It's not just questions, but questions rightly asked that are important. (Lynch is discussing W.K. Clifford's great essay on the Ethics of Belief, which is collected in The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays (Great Books in Philosophy).) I think Firestein would agree with Clifford that testing and open enquiry are what really matter.

One of the virtues of this book is its brevity. Almost half the book is taken up by a single chapter on four case histories, including current research on consciousness and the question of whether or not animals think. He finishes this chapter with a fascinating autobiographical section, outlining his own adventures in neuroscience. A section on suggested further reading includes useful single-paragraph summaries of the books he's recommending.

Given the vastness of this subject, it would be unfair to criticize Firestein for something he's left out. However, I happen to be reading Popkin's The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, which explores a strand of anti-intellectualism that began in Reformation Europe and has paralleled and plagued science ever since. Popkin quotes Michel de Montaigne: "The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience." This is not the kind of ignorance recommended by Firestein, since it is associated with "the imbecility of human reason". The religious view is to trust in God to supply the revealed truth and that "man is safe in his total natural ignorance."

We need to be careful when celebrating ignorance not to endorse such views. Firestein is a robust defender of reason and he knows the difference between "dumb and ignorant". However, I think he goes too far in claiming that the single thing all scientists know about facts is that they're unreliable and that nothing "is safe from the next generation of scientists with the next generation of tools." For the word "fact" to have any serious meaning it cannot be subject to this kind of continual revision. (In Uncommon Sense: Heretical Nature of Science, Alan Cromer makes a good case for certainty in science.)

Firestein "came to science late, after a career in, of all things, the theater" and his probably unique career trajectory into neuroscience is in itself remarkable. Most scientists will welcome the idea that science has as much "excitement and creativity" as can be found in the arts, and that "[m]ucking about in the unknown is an adventure". Fewer may appreciate his argument that grant applications are a good thing (even the President of the Royal Society thinks there should be longer intervals between having to fill in all those forms). Firestein recognizes that every scientist spends a significant amount of time writing - and complaining about writing - grants, but he argues that this can also be seen as an exercise in defining ignorance, a core part of the job of being a scientist. Firestein's advice to a scientist about to sit down and write a grant application? "Imagine being awarded a prize for what you don't know"!
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but overstated 24 Feb 2013
By F Henwood TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
This is an interesting book but its main thesis is not novel and one feels that it is somewhat overstated for the purpose of effect.

`It's not facts and rules, it's black cats in darkened rooms' that drives science forward, the author states. The first clause, stated like that, is clearly false. The second clause is valid but not novel.

First of all, to deny that science is not about facts and rules is false. The laws of thermodynamics for instance describe a rule about the world and the sort of facts that we can expect to find out about the world if the rule is true. You need to fill your car's petrol tank from time to time to keep it on the road and you need to eat in order to live. The reason why you must eat is the same why you must fill your car's tank. Your car and your body are closed systems that need energy. If your car kept rolling after your tank ran dry or you live without eating, then your car and your body are both generating energy from within, without having got it from petrol or food. Your car and your body have become perpetual motion machines. But because the laws of thermodynamics are true, in the sense they are about facts and rules, then both possibilities are ruled out. It is very easy to put this proposition to the test. Try not eating for a few weeks and see how you feel or try starting your car without any petrol in its tank.

It is true that science is defined partially by ignorance, in the positive sense of the word in that it helps frames what we don't know, and what questions still need to be answered. This is the sense in which the author appears to be using the word. Perhaps the general public or non-scientists are not aware of this but this supposition is to patronize. I think most people would grasp a very simple idea: if we had the answers already, then we would not need to do experiments or do science. We do experiments and science precisely because we do not know the answers. It is also true that science generates mystery - or more precisely, generates more questions to which no easy answers are to hand. But, as physicist Lawrence Krauss has pointed out elsewhere, `science specifies what uncertainty is'. The stress on ignorance therefore is not a new idea.

I do not want to sound like I am unduly doing the book down. It is interesting and the emphasis on the positive role of ignorance in the case studies he offers is interesting and convincing and it is worth knowing. Nor is he is a radical relativist - he is a practising neuroscientist himself. And he is right to stress that scientists do get it wrong. Phrenology is a pseudoscience yet its practitioners at the time didn't think so. But we now know it's a false science because it is demonstrably false. Bumps on the skull explain nothing and predict nothing. No rules about human behaviour and conduct can be derived from bumps on the skull. Not everything a man in a white coat says and does must necessarily be true merely account of his authority. But how do we know if he is wrong? By appealing to the facts, that's how. And if he is in ignorance of something, when he thinks he has the answer, then to show this we need, once again, to appeal to the facts.

Read this book to be informed and stimulated. But the conclusions it makes in my view are overstated. Science is in large part driven by ignorance (to repeat, in the sense of framing what it is we don't know and what sort of questions we should be asking) but to say that it is not about the accumulation of facts and rules is surely an exaggeration.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?   Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums


Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category


Feedback


Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges