Sometimes, perhaps, the largest impediment to solving a problem, in general and in physics, is the framing of the question in the context of widely accepted implicit, or unstated or assumed concepts.
If, unaware and unknowledgeable — ignorant – of those learned assumptions, one blunders into the problem, can that be an advantage, unencumbered by what the learned think they know? The more unquestioned those assumptions are, the harder it is to tackle the unsolved problem is?
Or does the inquiry of the ignorant lead to merely ignorance elaborated?
Are there historical examples?
There cannot be any advantage to such a method, because one cannot begin in ignorance when solving problems. Wherever you are, that is where you find you find yourself. No knower can escape such embeddedness in a situation, so all that the fake posture of "ignorance" accomplishes is render less detectable the biases that are bound to colour (sometimes in a positive way) one's inquiry. You know (some stuff). Period. Own it.
Accordingly, pretending to not know what one already knows is "as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian" (C. S. Peirce, "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1868).
The problem must be discussed and solved knowing and aware of everything surrounding it.
https://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/lean-six-sigma-business-performance/columns/ignorance-is-good
Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed
Thank you, an article right on point (about business management problem solving) , though like many perspectives, open to argument.
From the article you linked, quote from Peter Drucker:
" Ignorance is the most important factor in problem solving."
The issue is to solve a problem or to advance data/understanding. Simple advance requires starting with a long list of other's prior work (in the introduction of a paper).
What is a problem? I suggest it is a situation wherein the standard approaches have been shown to fail. I include models that start to have many ad hoc additions such as dark matter, dark energy. Starting from the very basics (building from what we see) and do it all over may highlight alternatives. However, such procedures require a much more time consumptive approach. Indeed, if college students started a class with such an approach, it is likely they would receive a failing grade. Another difficulty is that the attempt would probably yield rejection by the majority of those in power such as happened to H. Arp.
John Hodge.
Thank you for your reply.
Who is H. Arp? (I do not know the person.) Do you mean the astrophysicist Halton Arp? Do you mean that his ideas on redshift out of the main stream were disfavored?
He seems to have been an interesting person. As a result of your reply, I have ordered his book, Seeing Red, and look forward to reading it.Thank you.
Best.
Robert Shour - I am honestly glad you asked the question, since it often leaves me wandering about existence of "a recipe" of how to proceed with ideas.
At first, I must disagree with all RG members that provided their answers to this question. Let me explain why I think this works so counter-intuitively. Having a fresh start with clear mind is nothing that can cause any harm in the deductive process. Beginning in "tabula rasa" mode con throw into consideration the most crazy and radical ideas that finally gives your research some unrepeatable value, originality (although that statement is quite poetic and still requires further explanations).
Being "ignorant", as you put it , is nothing wrong as long as you make some initial efforts to the research, shaping the grounds for what you want it to be. Then, the crucial part comes - your crude maybe abstract or even ephemeric ideas must confront mathematical rigour and possibly huge amount of versatile comparison with others' work in the field. Does my idea explain what others observed/anticipated? Is my idea formally simpler/more elegant? Do I see any far-reaching consequences, inconceivable in terms of other pictures?
The second thing is, you asked about some historical examples. How often do we hear statements like "X independently discovered equivalent form of an answer that Y provided Z years earlier basing only on...". I think before the internet era such situations were often overlooked. Besides, when two intelligent creative persons tackle the same problem independently, the results are never completely equivalent. There has to be at least some difference in interpretation of equations.
And finally, D.C.Dennet in his "Consciousness explained"wrote about (I am clearly paraphrasing) some "insane" ideas, that he committed during his survey to present his theory of consciousness. Then he continue with expressing his hope for these mistakes to be indeed insane, since he felt that is the only way for them to bring any progress. But this is just my interpretation.
You cannot make a real breakthrough with a total new idea if you spend a life time learning all available ideas. One needs a clear mind. However, one needs to have all the factual knowledge in order to build a new theory..
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