This is part of its efforts to popularize science to the general public and students who are pursuing science as their career. TNSF attempt to focus on students on higher science as everyone knows that learning of science at college within the curriculum is not enough to acquire holistic knowledge of science at the appropriate time. Hence, to fill the gap between what students are acquiring through the curriculum and what it is required, TNSF is planning its activities on higher science to students who are pursuing higher education.
About the Lecture The more you know, the better, right? Not necessarily. In this talk, the speaker describes how ignorance is often a virtue when it comes to understanding the world. Humans only have coarse-grained access to our surroundings; there is an unfathomable amount of information that our senses simply cannot detect. This is usually regarded as a limitation. If we were able to access more information about our surroundings, then surely this could only enhance our understanding. He argues against this common presumption. Our coarse-grained access to the world is not merely a limitation on our knowledge, it is a resource. Selectively ignoring certain features of the world can reveal patterns in nature that would otherwise be invisible. He discusses three scientifically important consequences of our limited access to information: it allows us to construct unifying explanations of otherwise disparate phenomena, it renders otherwise unpredictable systems predictable, and it grants us simple causal levers to intervene effectively in highly complex systems. We are able to understand the world because of (not in spite of) the fact that so much of the world is hidden from us.
Introduction
Tarun Menon
Associate Professor, the Philosophy group, the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
The Less You Know, the Better: The Value of Selective Ignorance
Q & A
Tarun Menon, is an Associate Professor with the Philosophy group at the School of Arts and Sciences in Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He studied physics at Amherst College and philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He specializes in the philosophy of science and its intersections with political and social philosophy. His published research includes work on the nature of evidence and explanation in the natural sciences, the role of moral and social values in scientific research, and the conception of justice that should guide climate policy. He also works on the structure of systems of social power, and has recently co-edited a volume of essays entitled Cultural Domination: Philosophical Perspectives.