Does expanding the field of knowlegde increase the horison of ignorance??

Question

to what extent does expanding the field of knowledge increase our horison of ignorance?

Answer 1

Madhukar is correct.  As the boundaries of knowledge are expanded, the questions that "we" were not knowledgeable to ask become visible.  The number of living technologists on earth has grown exponentially since the invention of movable type set.  We no longer have to re-invent the wheel to push forward our knowledge base, but the faster we do this, the more obvious it becomes that we either asked the "wrong" question or failed to understand the complexity of the question in the first place.

Go into a library and find the section that represents that which is your field of knowledge.  There are shelves upon shelves of books on the subject that you consider to be the one you know best.  It is humbling, I believe.

When Newton dies, he probably understood 70 or more percent of all physics known at that time (maybe more).  When I die, I will be lucky to fully understand 1% or it (or less).

-Fred

Answer 2

When you are in a valley, your world is limited. As you climb up the mountain, you get to see the larger world and also get the feel that the part of the world that you do not see is much larger that you knew earlier.

Exactly same is the situation in case of knowledge. When you are ignorant, you feel the field of knowledge that you do not know is limited. As you climb up the ladder of knowledge, you get the feel of the large ocean of knowledge of which you were till then ignorant.

Answer 3

f(ignorance) = sqrt(knowledge)

Answer 4

I don't know exactly what you mean by the phrase "horizon of ignorance".

I believe you are talking about what we perceive as the knowledge which we still do not know compared to what we already know.  

The "knowledge that we do not know" at the beginning is there.  But as we continuously discover them, then it is logical to say that the "knowledge that we do not know" begins to diminish, although it is still immensely large compared to the knowledge that we know.  Of course, no one could tell, how much knowledge at the beginning there was waiting to be discovered.  For all we know it is infinitely large!!!

teddy boy