Civil Engineering September 2021 | Vol 29 No 8

Civil Engineering September 2021 45 driving such a person into the ‘Valley of Despair’. Only after a collision with reality at ground level can an understanding be developed that wisdom is based on real factual verifiable scientific knowledge. It also brings in the reality that experience is gained over a much longer time. If you persist in your learning over a prolonged period, you may even reach the level of a ‘Guru’. The latter longer learning time required to move towards guru status is underscored by “the ten-thousand-hour rule” made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his popular book Outliers 2 . It is tempting to stay and expand on the subject of Trump or the way conspiracy theories have and still shape the politics and battle around Covid-19 in the USA. It may be convenient as it allows ample room for projection, as if we are mere spectators from afar. The reality is, however, that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not just playing out around Covid-19 vaccination debates and progress even in South Africa, but the illustration of ignorance in our own field of roads and transportation as well. We first need to unpack the concept of ignorance before we venture into its implications in our world. DEFINITION OF IGNORANCE Ignorance needs to be described and defined properly as ignorance about ignorance abounds! As a starting point, the synonyms listed in the box below all describe ignorance in different contexts. A few words are highlighted to illustrate an even smaller sample that can demonstrate the variety in meaning that is possible in dif- ferent settings. There may even be words not familiar to all readers that may induce reflection and possibly enlightenment. Smithson 3 describes four overlapping broad distinctions of states of a basic understanding of ignorance as follows: Q Q Absence of knowledge – facts are not known Q Q False knowledge – facts are known with certainty, but are false (Trump’s utterances are a low hanging fruit to illustrate) Q Q Absence of understanding – there are deficits in knowledge Q Q False understanding – failures in the sense making around uncertainties and falsehoods. However, ignorance is more nuanced and in need of clearer explanation when it comes to a scientific technical environ- ment. The world of science classifies the states of ignorance as follows 4 : 1. Native or natural ignorance Joanne Roberts 5 describes this as our infant state when, “We all enter the world in a naturally ignorant state , but over time our natural ignorance shrinks as knowledge is accumulated or developed. Even though natural ignorance remains dominant, rational ignorance gradu- ally grows as awareness of one’s own ignorance increases.” Natural ignorance is often also described as unknown unknowns. It also implies a state of gullibility. 2. Ignorance as selective choice The human mind has a natural tendency to narrow down and focus in one direc- tion or concentrate on one aspect at the exclusion of other “clutter”. Some researchers even link it to the physiology of the setting of the human eyes in the head like that of predators, closely spaced in front of the face, versus that of a cow where the eyes are on the sides of the head. Cows see “everything and yet nothing in particular”, to measure changes to the total scene as possible threats, yet undefined or lacking focus. A predator’s eyes on the other hand delib- erately narrow down and see the detail of a certain aspect at the cost of awareness of the larger picture. Just watch a lion in hunting mode to remind yourself what focus looks like. Kuhn 6 originally described this human tendency to selective choice in the sci- entific research world in the early 1960s and coined the concept of paradigms. Paradigms have subsequently become a popular concept, and even business management circles found use in empha- sising paradigm shifts normally linked to disruptor technologies and events. Paradigms, or ignorance as a selective choice, is conscious or rational ignorance due to the deliberate ignoring of other available information. This aspect also links in with the human trait of confirmation or cognitive bias. This is linked to the act of favouring information that confirms your previous or existing beliefs or biases. “People who support or oppose a particular issue will not only seek information to support it, but they will also interpret news stories in a way that upholds their existing ideas. They will also remember details in a way that reinforces these attitudes.” 3. Ignorance as a strategic ploy or active construct This third form of ignorance is not a natural, native state, but rather something actively produced. The modern father of studies of ignorance, Robert Proctor 7 , states, “Ignorance can be produced and used as a strategic ploy, precisely because ignorance is typically viewed as a native and curable state.” In effect, the natural gullibility of humans is exploited. Technical terms for active constructed ignorance that have emerged include: nichtwissen, negative knowledge, non- knowledge, and agnotology . Agnotology, as a concept and word, has found favour in scientific papers based on Proctor’s defini- tion and foundational book Agnotology. The making & unmaking of Ignorance . The origin of the word agnotology is Greek, with the prefix ‘a’ meaning ‘without’ and ‘gnosis’ meaning ‘knowledge’. Agnotology is often described as “the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, including wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit.” Facts are often deliberately hidden (secrecy) or removed (censorship), misrepresented and ‘forgotten’. Agnotology is often more than just an absence of knowledge, it can also be the outcome of cultural and po- litical struggles. Closer to home, we would suffer from real ignorance if we did not acknowledge apartheid, as a policy and regime, as one of the best examples of the enforcement of a politically constructed state of claimed ignorance with damning Ignorance synonyms Benightedness, bewilderment , blindness, callowness, crudeness, darkness, denseness , disregard , dumbness, empty-headedness, fog, half-knowledge, illiteracy, incapacity, incomprehension , innocence, inscience, insensitivity, lack of education, mental incapacity, naivete ´, nescience, oblivion, obtuseness, philistinism, rawness, sciolism, shallowness, simplicity , stupidity , unawareness, unconsciousness , uncouthness, unenlightenment, unfamiliarity, unscholarliness , and vagueness.