IGNORANCE AND SCIENCE - DILEMMAS, PERSPECTIVES, AND PROSPECTS

Recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in creative work on scien tific ignorance and uncertainty, which can be traced in part to a real ization that ignorance and uncertainty cannot always be reduced or ban ished from science, and that they are social and cultural products rat her than merely ''part of the phenomenon. '' The fact that ignorance i s negotiable and yet fundamental to scientific work poses several impo rtant dilemmas and prospects. We may be participating in a shift from the traditional research strategies of reducing or banishing ignorance toward a deeper understanding of and greater capacity to cope with ig norance.