Ignorance (or witlessness) is a state of being uninformed (lack of knowledge).[1] The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware and is often used as an insult. Ignoramus is commonly used in the US, the UK, and Ireland as a name of someone who is willfully ignorant.
Ignorance is distinguished from stupidity, although both can lead to "unwise" acts.
Writer Thomas Pynchon articulated about the scope and structure of one's ignorance: "Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person's mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to [the advice of] writing about what we know, maybe we should add getting familiar with our ignorance, and the possibilities therein for writing a good story."[2]
Ignorance rooting from ignoring is a selective state of unawareness.[3]
The legal principle that ignorantia juris non excusat, literally "ignorance of the law is no excuse", stands for the proposition that the law applies also to those who are unaware of it.
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Matters which are obvious are sometimes ignored, not taken into consideration. This phenomenon is not limited to ordinary persons without native ability but extends to the highest level of human governance resulting in nightmarish scenarios that could, with more wisdom, have been avoided.[4]
Individuals with superficial knowledge of a topic or subject may be worse off than people who know absolutely nothing. As Charles Darwin observed, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."[5]
Ignorance can stifle learning, in that a person who falsely believes he or she is knowledgeable will not seek out clarification of his beliefs, but rather rely on his ignorant position. He may also reject valid but contrary information, neither realizing its importance nor understanding it. This concept is elucidated in Justin Kruger's and David Dunning's work, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," otherwise known as the Dunning–Kruger effect.