The Encyclopedia of Ignorance: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Unknown

by Ronald Duncan (Editor), Miranda Weston-Smith (Editor)

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Genres: Science, Nonfiction

443 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1977

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert and I have been having an argument in another thread about the question, which naturally arises when you read Penrose's The Road to Reality, of whether the world is in some sense complex-valued. Are there directly measurable physical quantities which intuitively should be thought of as being described by complex numbers, or is this just something we do because it makes the math more elegant?

It's not clear if the question has a meaning, but of course it's been discussed before, for example in this book. As the title suggests, the answer given is "Nobody knows". I don't think much has changed since 1978, when the book appeared. The line I'm taking is that it's an empirical issue. As I wrote in the other thread:

If you could measure something that had two components, and there was a physically meaningful operation you could do to combine two such things which followed the laws of multiplication for complex numbers, wouldn't you say you were observing a complex quantity? It just so happens that we don't know of anything like that.

So what could be an example? asks Robert. Okay: having thought about it a little, here's a hypothetical case which is close to the way light actually behaves.

Suppose there were something we'll call Q-radiation, and suppose we had a way of measuring Q-radiation at a point. When you do a measurement, you get two numbers, q1 and q2. The first number can have any value, and the second is between 0 and 2π.

Now suppose you can pass Q-radiation through certain objects and that you measure what comes out at the other side. Let's say that the values for the Q-radiation going in are (qi1, q12) and the values for the Q-radiation coming out are (qo1, qo2). You discover that every object which is transparent to Q-radiation has two characteristic values (k1, k2), which we call the object's Q-index, such that the following equations always hold:

qo1 = qi1 x k1
qo2 = qi2 + k2 (mod 2π)

Well, under the above circumstances, I'd certainly say that Q-radiation was complex-valued, as was the Q-index. It would be kind of perverse not to.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every science book should be written this way, as a catalogue of what we *don't* yet know about it, and what we'd most love to find out. I really wish this book had a bunch of sequels carrying us forward through time from the 1978 edition to now.

[Aurelius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brings to mind the philosopher, who when asked what his greatest piece of knowledge is, replies "that I may be completely wrong about everything."

[K.A.L.M]

I've just read an interview in Conversations on Consciousness by Susan Blackmore with Richard Gregory who replied when asked about his interest in Consciousness:

'I’ve been interested in perception for about a million years
but I didn’t actually think much about consciousness simply because
I didn’t know how to think about it. Then I did an article in the
Encyclopaedia of Ignorance about 25 years ago.

It was quite funny because the publishers wrote to me and said
they’d got cold feet about the title, and I said, ‘Well I don’t want my
article on consciousness published under any other title because
I know I’m ignorant and it’s ideal publishing under the rubric of
ignorance.’ I suppose others must have said the same thing, because
it didn’t get changed.'

LOL, I loved that and it's made me really want to read the book. I see it has pretty good ratings so it's definitely on my 'Want to Read' List.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any attempt to review this book will be superficial

The front cover says "Everything you ever wanted to know about the unknown"
They were not kidding. This is a series of short essays packed with profound questions and a powerful amount of knowledge to back the questions up. If you are a Gary Zukav fan then this will defiantly be too complex for you.
The contributors are too numerous to mention; however, they include information from Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Just as you think this is a past cutting-edge physics book, it switches to "What is consciousness, and do we need it?" You will find augments for and against your favorite theories.
Some of the Contents are
Why
O. R. Frich
The Lure of Completeness
Sir Hermann Bondi

[Visakh Unnikrishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

great