Seeds of Doubt

Today's word: Agnotology.

According to Robert Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, agnotology is the "study of the politics of ignorance."  Proctor "look[s] at how ignorance is actively created through things like military secrecy in science or through deliberate policies like the tobacco industry's effort to manufacture doubt" (Discover, December 2008).

Today is Agnotology Day in China.

It was 20 years ago today. . . .

Do you know that the preponderance of college students in China today--educated young people--have no idea what happened in Tiananmen Square?  What is astonishing is not so much the Chinese government's desire to keep the events hushed up but their apparent success in doing so.  It's as if you were to walk around UC Berkeley asking students where they were on September 11, 2001, only to receive responses like, "How should I remember?  That was almost eight years ago!"

We are not so naive as to think the Chinese government unique in its desire to keep inconvenient truths from its population.  Speaking of inconvenient truths, after all, one of the most successful examples of governmental agnotology in the United States was the Bush administration's continued insistence that global warming was not established scientific fact.

Still, if the Chinese government can successfully keep such a massive event secret from such a massive population, it makes one wonder what other secrets are being kept by other countries.  What suppressed knowledge awaits Americans who travel to other countries, particularly countries that are less than sympathetic to our government's policies?

There may be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.  But how many of those things are we just not being allowed to realize?

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Also, in case you missed it, David Carradine was found dead in his hotel in Thailand earlier.  Apparently, he hanged himself (although considering that he was found naked, one wonders if this was suicide or some sort of accident).  At any rate, rest in peace, David.  While we were not fans of "Kung Fu" (a little before our time), we certainly enjoyed your work in things like "Kill Bill"--you definitely had a certain flair.