The unknown unknowns

We are frequently assailed with the notion that knowledge is doubling every n-years and that the interval between doublings is shrinking with each doubling. We are even told that knowledge will someday be increasing at a rate that is so fast it will represent a distinct break in human history. After this turning point, often referred to as the singularity, machines will be smarter than humans and launch human society into an unprecedented orgy of invention and progress.

An antidote to this kind of thinking is David Orr’s, Ecological Literacy, a compilation of essays that remain as fresh and profound today as they were when they were published in 1992. While Orr would not deny the proliferation of knowledge, he posits an equal and opposite reaction. With each doubling of knowledge, we get a doubling of ignorance.

What does he mean? The example he cites is the discovery of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in the 1930s. These substances turned out to be marvelous as refrigerants and spray-can propellants. They are nontoxic, noncorrosive, nonflammable and odorless. As we learned more about them, we found new uses in manufacturing and as cleaning solvents. Our knowledge was increasing. Also increasing was our ignorance of the consequences of using CFCs. Only in the early 1970s did researchers discover that CFCs, once discharged into the air, make their way into the upper atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer. In fact, a large hole opened in the ozone layer in the mid-1980s giving dramatic testimony to the effects of CFCs.

But the discovery of the mechanism behind the ozone hole might very well have come too late had it not been for a lone scientist who wondered what happened to CFCs after they entered the atmosphere. It is a only matter of great good fortune that F. Sherwood Rowland obtained a grant in 1973 to find the answer. There was, in fact, no systematic search underway into the side effects of CFCs, and those side effects could have easily eluded our notice. Our growing ignorance came very close to imperilling all plant and animal life on the planet.

Energy Bulletin