It Has Been Said

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by MARLYS H. WITTE, ANN KERWIN, and CHARLES L. WITTE* ON IGNORANCE "In the sense of unaware and as yet unlearned our ignorance and our recognition of that ignorance may be the best motivation both for problem solving and for creative activity . . ."—Norman Hackerman "The medical profession must disabuse itself and others of the idea that there is anything improper or calamitous about admitting ignorance ... so that solutions can be achieved by considered study rather than by frantic edict."—Franz J. Inglefinger "Science is the topography of ignorance."—Oliver Wendell Holmes "You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things. ... It doesn't frighten me."—Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman "When we consider the reasons we have to think that what lies within our ken is but a small part of the universe, we shall discover an huge abyss of ignorance ."—John Locke "Through seas of knowledge we our course advance, / Discov'ring still new worlds ofignorance; / And these discov'ries make us all confess / That sublunary science is but guess."—William Derham ?Department of Surgery, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85724. Material appearing under this title is collected with the aim of making the serious a bit less serious, the ponderous a bit less heavy, and the reading hours a bit more fun. Toward this goal we invite a guest editor of this feature for each issue. Will readers volunteer to share their senses of humor by collecting or recollecting items that have brought smiles to their faces? We invite your participation. Originals are also welcomed. 524 I It Has Been Said "Ifwe set out to give as little help as possible to originality in science, we could scarcely devise a better plan than our educational system. Youngsters ought to be told what is unknown about ourselves and our universe as well as what is known."—Nobel Laureate William N. Lipscomb "It is the mountain of the unknown that spurs scientific progress . . . our progress is impeded by true ignorance: lack of familiarity with that which is known and lack ofcomprehension ofthe need for—and the very nature of—the process of biomedical research."—Nobel Laureate Thomas Weller "Man needs not only knowledge but ignorance too. Knowledge alone, or ignorance alone, leads him into darkness. . . . The world is so filled with the matter of knowledge that men would go mad if they were to attempt to cram all of it into their heads. The ability to forget is just as necessary as the ability to remember ."—Vinoba Bhave "Knowledge is the raw material ofignorance and vice versa."—Marlys Witte "The domain of ignorance includes all the things we know we don't know, all the things we don't know we don't know, and all the things we think we know but don't."—Ann Kerwin "And just maybe a new set of courses dealing systematically with ignorance and science might take hold. The scientists might discover in it a new and subversive technique for catching the attention of students driven by curiosity, delighted and surprised to learn that science is exactly as Bush described it: an "endless frontier." The humanists for their part might take considerable satisfaction watching their scientific colleagues confess openly to not knowing everything about everything. And the poets, on whose shoulders the future rests, might, late nights, thinking things over, begin to see some meanings that elude the rest of us. It's worth a try."—Lewis Thomas Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 31, 4 ¦ Summer 1988 \ 525 ...