Ignorabimus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ignorabimus, short for the Latin maxim ignoramus et ignorabimus meaning 'we do not know and will not know', stood for a pessimistic (in one sense) position on the limits of scientific knowledge, in the thought of the nineteenth century. It was given currency by Emil du Bois-Reymond, a German physiologist, in his Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens of 1872. It generated continuing debate.

Contrary to this presumption, David Hilbert pronounced:

Für den Mathematiker gibt es kein Ignorabimus, und meiner Meinung nach auch für die Naturwissenschaft überhaupt nicht. ... Der wahre Grund, warum es nicht gelang, ein unlösbares Problem zu finden, besteht meiner Meinung nach darin, daß es unlösbare Probleme überhaupt nicht gibt. Statt des törichten Ignoramibus heiße im Gegenteil unsere Losung:
Wir müssen wissen
wir werden wissen."

― David Hilbert, Den Text des Vortrages ist in Die Naturwissenschaften, 28 November 1930, S.959-963 veröffentlicht.

For the mathematician there is no Ignorabimus, and, in my opinion, not at all for natural science either. ... The true reason why [no one] has succeeded in finding an unsolvable problem is, in my opinion, that there is no unsolvable problem. In contrast to the foolish Ignoramibus, our credo avers:
We must know,
We shall know."

― David Hilbert, Königsberg, September 1930, spoken in opening address to the Society of German Scientists and Physicians

It still had resonance at the time of a celebrated radio broadcast, in 1930, by David Hilbert, declaring that the ignorabimus could be banished from mathematics.

The sociologist Wolf Lepenies has discussed the ignorabimus in the context that du Bois-Reymond was not really pulling back so far, in his claims for science and its reach:

it is in fact an incredibly self-confident support for scientific hubris masked as modesty (Between Literature and Science: the Rise of Sociology, p.272).

This is in discussion of Friedrich Wolters, one of the Stefan George circle (and indeed therefore in the direction that Hilbert was aiming). Lepenies comments that Wolters misunderstood, therefore, the actual degree of pessimism being expressed about science; but well understood the implication that scientists themselves could be trusted with self-criticism.