The Long History of Ignorance

A wonderful six-part BBC Radio 4 podcast series, The Long History of Ignorance, presented by Rory Stewart. In an age of instant answers and performative certainty, it's a welcome and necessary counterbalance.

BBC Radio 4 - Rory Stewart: The Long History of...

Ignorance is often framed as a lack to be eliminated, but Stewart suggests it can also be a generative force, especially in the arts, spirituality, and human insight.

In science, ignorance marks the edge of what is known: dark matter; distant galaxies or; the future of AI. This is a form of disciplined humility, remaining ever humble about what we know and ever optimistic about what we will. Science harnesses ignorance and is driven by it.

Outside science, we can learn to live well with the unknown, although we are hardwired to avoid it.

Spiritual traditions across cultures suggest that letting go of knowledge-seeking can open deeper forms of understanding, shifting attention from analytic thinking to presence, to the body, to breath, to being. In this way, ignorance is not absence but clarity; a letting go that allows something more universal to emerge.

Artistic creation, too, often thrives in the absence of certainty. The dynamic between knowledge and ignorance is a creative tension that can generate something new.

Many creators describe their best work arising when they didn’t quite know what they were doing. Some artists deliberately choose tools or media they don’t fully understand to disrupt habits and trigger new insights.

This openness is often supported by “incubation”, allowing ideas to settle, evolve, or combine unconsciously. It’s like allowing a plant to grow without digging it up every day to check the roots.

This dialectic between what we know and what we cannot know can give rise to wisdom. Wisdom is not the possession of answers, but the capacity to live in the space between knowledge and unknowing.

The finiteness of life offers the starkest encounter with ignorance. It cannot be solved, only faced. Traditions offer metaphors but no certainties. This very unknowability gives life its poignancy and urgency. Music, poetry, and ritual can help us feel our way into that space, not by explaining death, but by helping us live alongside it.

Stewart argues that our ignorance of the future is what allows for freedom, hope, and possibility. If everything were known in advance, nothing could be chosen. While it is true that some of our most pressing problems come from ignorance, change, autonomy and the development of relationships all depend on the unknown.