AGNOTOLOGY The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance Edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger Stanford University Press Stanford, California Contents VII Preface . Sranford Universiry Press 1 Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Sranford, California Production of Ignorance (and lts Study) Ii) 2008 by rhe Board of Trusrees of the Leland Sranford Junior Universary. I ROBERT N. PROCTOR All righrs reserved. No parr of this book may be reproduced or rransmined in any form or by any means, electronic SEC RE C Y, SE LE CT ION , AND SU PPRESSION or mechanical, mcludmg photocopying and recording, or 111 any informarion srorage or PART 1 remeval system warhour the prior wrarrcn permission of Sranford Un iversity Press. Removing Knowledge: The Logic of Modern Censorship Printed in the United rates of America on acid-free, archaval-quala ry paper 2 37 Library of Congress Caraloging-in-Pu blacation Dara PET ER CALISON Agnorology: the making and unmaking of ignorance I edared by Roberr N. Procror and . Challenging Knowledge: How Climate Science Became Londa Schiebinger. 3 p.cm. a Victim of the Cold War Includes bibl iographical references and index. NAOMI ORESKES AND ER IK M . CONWAY 5 5 ISBN 978-0-8047-5652-5 (cloth: alk. paper)- ISBN 978-0-8047-5901 -4 (pbk.: alk. paper) . Manufactured Uncertainty: Contested Science and the 1. Ignorance (Theory of knowledge)-Social aspecrs-Congresses. 2. Secrecy­ 4 Congresses. I. Procror, Robert, 19 54- II. Protection of the Public's Health and Environment Schiebinger, Londa L. BD221.A36 2008 DAVID MICHAELS 001--dc22 20070498 11 . Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology Porrions of the following chapters have been previously published as indicated: CHAPTER 2: 5 Peter Galison, "Removing Knowledge,,. Critical Inquiry 3 1 (2004): 229-243. Ii) 2004, of Ignorance The University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of The Universiry of Chicago Press. 108 NANCY TUANA CllAl'TER 4: D. Michaels and C. Monforron, k Manufacturing Uncerminty: ('on rested Science and the Protecrion of the Public's Health and Environment, American journal of Public Health 95 (2005): S39-S48. © 2005 American Public Health Association. CHAPTER 5: ancy LO T KNOWLED GE, LOST WORLDS Tuana, "Coming to Undersrand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance," Hypatia: A PART 11 journal of Feminist Philosophy 19 (2004): 194-23 2.. Ii) 2004 by I lypatia, Inc. Reprinted by 6. West Indian Abortifacients and the Making of Ignorance permission of Indiana Universiry Press. CllArTER 6: Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: 149 Colonial B1oprospecting in the Atlantic \Vorld. © 2004 by Londa Schiebinger. Reprinted by LONDA SC HIEBIN CE R permission of Harvard University Press. CllAPTFR 7: Adrienne Mayor, l·osstl Legends of the First Americans.© 2005 by Princeron University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton . Suppression of Indigenous Fossil Knowledge: U111 vcrs1ry Press. C llAPTER to: Charles W. Malls, "White Ignorance," pp. 13-38 in Race and 7 Epistemolog1es of Ignorance, Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, eds.© ;i.007 State University from Claverack, New York, 1705 to Agate Springs, of New York Press. Reprinted by permission of Srate University of New York Press. Nebraska, 2005 D~igned by Bruce Lundquisr AORILNNE M AYOR Typeset at Stanford University Press in roll 5 Sabon CONTENTS 8. Mapping Ignorance in Archaeology: The Advantages of Historical Hindsight Preface AL I SON WY LI E PART Ill THEORIZING IG NORANCE 9. Social Theories of Ignorance w E LI v E JN AN AGE OF IGNORANCE, and it is irnportantto understand MICHAEL J. SMIT H SON 209 how this came to be and why. Our goal here is to explore how ignorance IO. White Ignorance is produced or maintained in diverse settings, through mechanisms such CHARLES W. MILLS 230 as deliberate or inadvertent neglect, secrecy and suppression, document destruction, unquestioned tradition, and myriad fo rms of inherent (or II. Risk Management versus the Precautionary Principle: avoidable) culturopolitical selectivity. Agnotology is the study of igno­ Agnotology as a Strategy in the Debate over Genetically rance making, the lost and forgotten. One focus is on knowledge that Engineered Organisms could have been but wasn't, or should be but isn't, but we shall also see DAVID MAGNUS that not all ignorance is bad. IZ. Smoking Out Objectivity: Journalistic Gears in the Our p rimary purpose here is to promote the study of ignorance, by Agnotology M achine developing tools for understanding how and why various forms of know­ JON CHR I STENSEN 266 ing have "not come to be," or disappeared, or have been delayed or long neglected, for better or for worse, at various points in history. Swimming List of Contributors as we do in oceans of ignorance, examples could be multiplied ad infini­ Index tum. Contributors to this volu me probe the secrecy maintained by mili­ tary classification, the "doubt" peddled by manufacturers of carcinogens ("doubt is our product"), the denialist claims of environmental troglo­ dytes, the nontransfer of technologies (such as birth control) from colonial outposts to imperial centers, the role of disciplinarity and media "balance routines" on agnogenesis, and certain aspects of racial and sexual igno­ rance. The idea is that a great deal of attention has been given to episte­ mology (the study of how we know) when "how or why we don't know" is often just as important, usually far more scandalous, and remarkably undertheorized. This volume emerged from workshops held at Pennsylvania State Uni­ versity in 2003 and at Stanford University in 2005, the goal of which was to come to grips with how ignorance has been understood, created, and ignored, linking these ideas also to allied creations of secrecy, uncertainty, confusion, silence, absence, and impotence-especially as these pertain VI VII u PREFA C E to scientific activities. For financial support, we owe a debt of gratitude to the National Science Foundation-and at Penn State, to the Science, Medicine, and Technology in Culture initiative, the Institute for Arts and Humanities, the Rock Ethics Institute, and the departments of History, English, and Anthropology. At Stanford we are also grateful to the His­ tory & Philosophy of Science, the Suppes Center, the Humanities Center, Modern Thought and Literature, and the Stanford Center for Biomedical AGNOTOLOGY Ethics. We are also thankful for administrative help provided by Rosemary Rogers, Michelle Cale, and Jeanene Jenkins. We are hoping this volume will be taken as opening a door to a broader realm of inquiry. We invite others to step through this door, and to explore the many other realms of ignorance that saturate and define our world. viii CHAPTE R I Agnotology A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (and Its Study) ROBERT N. PROCTOR We are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance. Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person's mental map. It has contours and coher­ ence, and for all 1 know rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to writing about what we know, maybe we should add getting familiar with our ignorance. T homas Pynchon, 1984 Doubt is our product. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, internal memo, 1969 PHI LO SOPH ERS LOVE TO TALK ABOUT KNOWLEDGE . Awhoie field is devoted to reflection on the topic, with product tie-ins to professor­ ships and weighty conferences. Epistemology is serious business, taught in academies the world over: there is "moral" and "social" epistemology, epistemology of the sacred, the closet, and the family. There is a Compu­ tational Epistemology Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, and a Center for Epistemology at the Free Uni versity in Amsterdam. A Google search turns up separate websites for "constructivist," "feminist," and "evolutionary" epistemology, of course, but also " libidinal," "android," " Quaker," "Internet," and (my fa vorite) "erotometaphysical" epistemol­ ogy. H arvard offers a course in the field (without the erotometaphysical part), which (if we are to believe its website) explores the epistemic status of weighty claims like "the standard meter is I meter long" and "I am not a brain in a vat." 1 We seem to know a lot about knowledge.2 Wha t is remarkable, though, is how li ttle we know a bout ignorance.3 There is not even a well-known word for its study {though our hope is tO I u ROBERT N. PROCTOR AGNOTOLOGY: A M I SSING TERM change that), no fancy conferences or polished websites. This is particularly thing at all about time before the Big Bang circa 14 billion years ago. And remarkable, given (a) how much ignorance there is, (b) how many kinds there are many different ways not to know. Ignorance can be the flipside of there are, and (c) how consequential ignorance is in our lives. memory, what we don't know because we have forgotten, parts of which The point of this volume is to argue that there is much, in fact, to know. can be restored by historical inquiries but most of which is forever lost. Ignorance has many friends and enemies, and figures big in everything from (And we often cannot say which.) Ignorance can be made or unmade, and trade association propaganda to military operations to slogans chanted at science can be complicit in either process. children. Lawyers think a lot about it, since it often surfaces in consumer product liability and tort litigation, where the question is often "Who THE PURPOSE OF TH E PRESENT VOLUME isprogrammatic,tobegina knew what, and when?" Ignorance has many interesting surrogates and discussion of ignorance as more than the "not yet known" or the steadily overlaps in myriad ways with-as it is generated by-secrecy, stupidity, retreating frontier. We need t"; think about the conscious, unconscious, and apathy, censorship, disinformation, faith, and forgetfulness, all of which stru~ral production of ignorance, its diverse causes and conformations, are science-twitched.