Civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. The Socratic maxim that the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom has profound significance for our society.
When we understand man’s necessary ignorance of much that helps him achieve his aims within civilisation, we realise that the individual person benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of.
Our knowledge is very far from perfect. Scientists tend to stress what is known, but in the social context what we do not know is often so much more important that the effect of scientific research can be very misleading.
Many of the utopian constructions are worthless because they follow the lead of the theorists in assuming that we have perfect knowledge.
Ignorance, though, is a very difficult subject to discuss.
The misleading effect of the usual approach of discussing this ignorance stands out clearly if we examine the significance of the assertion that man has created his civilisation and that he can therefore also change its institutions as he pleases.
This could only apply if man had deliberately created civilisation in full understanding of what he was doing and knew how it was being maintained.
It is true, of course, that man has made his civilisation as a product of his action over a few hundred generations, but this does not mean that civilization is the product of human design or that we can even know what its functioning or continued existence depends on.
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