Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. The neologism was coined by Robert N Proctor, a Stanford University professor specializing in the history of science and technology. Its name derives from the Neoclassicalm Greek word ἄγνωσις, agnōsis, “not knowing” (cf. Attic Greek ἄγνωτος “unknown”), and -λογία, –logia More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where more knowledge of a subject leaves one more uncertain than before. The so-called BBC are a prime example in continuing to promote Celtic racism while ignoring the history of the Pretani , the native inhabitants of the British Isles.
There are many causes of culturally induced ignorance or nescience. Paramount is the influence of the Mediacracy, either through neglect or as a result of deliberate misrepresentation and manipulation. Corporations and governmental agencies can also contribute to agnotology through secrecy and suppression of information, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness. In April I gave a lecture to prominent academics of the Sorbonne University in France to explain the role of republican nationalist academics here in suppressing knowledge of the Pretani .
A prime example of the deliberate production of ignorance cited by Proctor is the tobacco industry’s advertising campaign to manufacture doubt about cancer and other health effects of tobacco use.. Under the banner of science, the industry produced research about everything except tobacco hazards to exploit public uncertainty. Agnotology also focuses on how and why diverse forms of knowledge do not “come to be”, or are ignored or delayed. For example, knowledge about plate tectonics was censored and delayed for at least a decade because some evidence was classified military information related to undersea warfare.
An emerging new scientific discipline that has connections to agnotology is Cognitronics:
Cognitronics aims (a) at explicating the distortions in the perception of the world caused by the information society and globalization and (b) at coping with these distortions in different fields. Cognitronics is studying and looking for the ways of improving cognitive mechanisms of processing information and developing emotional sphere of the personality – the ways aiming at compensating three mentioned shifts in the systems of values and, as an indirect consequence, for the ways of developing symbolic information processing skills of the learners, linguistic mechanisms, associative and reasoning abilities, broad mental outlook being important preconditions of successful work practically in every sphere of professional activity in information society.
The field of cognitronics appears to be growing as international conferences have centred on the topic.