Ignorance Is Not Permanent - But Can Be

“The greatest ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about”

There is no lack of benighted individuals who believe that if something is not known, it can't be known.  Or that if something was once understood in a certain way, it can never be understood differently.  Examples of such individuals?  Just about anyone who follows 'ancient' or 'traditional' anything whose tenants are not subject to update, such as acupuncture, herbalism, flat-earth-ness, the purported writings of Nostradamus (poor man - perhaps the most misquoted human ever), or just about any religion.

Included, as well, are those whose science education in school was apparently so poor that they believe that any new discovery, new theory, or re-jiggered-to-explain-new-discoveries idea somehow 'threatens the Scientific Establishment' and therefore is automatically suppressed.

Adherents to any set of beliefs that could be refuted or adjusted by newer discoveries (like this charming new one, for example) but whose adherents firmly (sometimes hysterically) cling to those older beliefs exactly as originally presented can be suspected of not even being mammals, since mammals are notorious for their curiosity, their ability to rapidly calculate and implement changes to their understanding, and their willingness to experiment with what they have learned.  Oh, and their realization that what they know at this moment is not permanent.

As Cassandra is fond of saying, "We don't know how the world works.  We only know how we think the world works."

Here is a delightful example of learning in process, this time having to do with our best friends.

Does this mean that no one will ever know where dogs 'came from?'  Does it mean that dogs must have come from some unknowable place, since that place, at the moment, appears subject to revision and even, perhaps, disagreement?

Well, hell no, as Mabel Queen of Argos would say.  It just means that the science guys are not done yet with figuring out the origin of dogs.  Scientific discussion, like all real discussion, consists of floating ideas, considering them, critiquing them, adjusting them, then floating the new resulting ideas until everyone can finally agree that they can't find anything wrong with them.  Until a bit later, of course, when someone does find something wrong, and around we go again.

Mabel herself, unimpressed by human fretting over her origin, is actually most interested in the upcoming origin of her supper.  And she expresses that interest by staring at the kitchen door, since she is smarter than those Confucius chided when he wrote, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.”  Mabel knows exactly where dinner comes from.  Unless that should change, in which case she will instantly adjust to that new knowledge.  You won't get any argument from her.