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“Thriving on Ignorance”

In: America’s Culture of Professionalism

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  • David Warfield Brown

Abstract

Laurence Veysey, who saw the irony of universities thriving on ignorance, observed that “the patterned isolation of [their] component parts … required that people continually talk past each other … This lack of comprehension, which safeguards one’s privacy and one’s illusions, doubtless occurs in many groups, but it may be of special importance in explaining the otherwise unfathomable behavior of society’s most intelligent members.”1 With the coming of expertise, John Dewey claimed, “Man has never had such a varied body of knowledge in his possession before.”2 But Dewey’s “man” was an abstraction—he didn’t exist. He never will. Thomas Sowell made the distinction that “the intellectual advantage” of civilized man over the primitive savage is not that “he has more knowledge, but that he requires far less.”3 And that is why the coming of credentialed expertise has flourished and compensated for everyone’s ignorance about most things.

Suggested Citation

  • David Warfield Brown, 2014. "“Thriving on Ignorance”," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: America’s Culture of Professionalism, chapter 0, pages 29-55, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-33715-3_3
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137337153_3
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