Agnoiology

Agnoiology (from the Greek ἀγνοέω, meaning ignorance) is the theoretical study of the quality and conditions of ignorance,[1] and in particular of what can truly be considered "unknowable" (as distinct from "unknown"). The term was coined by James Frederick Ferrier, in his Institutes of Metaphysic (1854),[2] as a foil to the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.[3]

This article is about the 19th-century epistemological theory of ignorance. For the 20th-century study of culturally-conditioned ignorance, see agnotology.

References

1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Agnoiology" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 378.
2. "Agnoiology". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1 (14 ed.). 1930. p. 351.
3. Roy Dilley, "The Construction of Ethnographic Knowledge in a Colonial Context", in Ways of Knowing: Anthropological Approaches to Crafting Experience and Knowledge, edited by Mark Harris (New York and Oxford, 2007), pp. 139-140.