About

The domain name, and the name of my blog, are references to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, the 18th-century physicist and writer after whom Lichtenberg figures are named and whose postumously published notebooks, given the name Sudelbücher, were important for the development of the aphorism in German literature and are the basis of his modern fame. A Sudelbuch is literally a draft book; it is translated as "waste book" because that is the corresponding bookkeeping term of art: a record made on the go, to be tidied up later at the close of business (or with whatever periodicity) and transferred to the finished journal. It is thus simultaneously provisional and seriously meant; it is not the final accounting one stands behind but records the inputs, in flight, to that accounting.

The subtitle, nescire aude, dare to be ignorant, is a play on sapere aude, dare to be wise, which does not originate in, but is known to me originally from, Kant's essay "What is Enlightenment?". Quite a while after thinking the inversion up I found this pleasing passage from Michael Landmann's Problematik: Nichtwissen und Wissensverlangen in philosophischen Bewusstsein (the passage is reproduced in the linked post—which in fact consists of little more than the below-reproduced passage—along with a now-dead google books link):

Gegenüber den nach allen Richtungen hin vor dem Einbruch des Ungedeuteten sichernden Systemen derer, die alles (oder doch genug) zu wissen glauben, erhebt sich in ihm zum ersten Mal eine Geistesrichtung, die nicht etwa nur ein solches System durch ein anderes ersetzen will, sondern weit antipodischer grundsätzlich den Mut zum Nichtwissen—nescire aude!—aufbringt und lieber die Bedrohung einer ungedeuteten Welt erträgt, als sich vorschnell bei einer doch nur scheinbaren Deutung beruhigt. In der Vorsokratik königlich kündende Gewißheit; bei Sokrates kindlich fragende Ungewißheit.

Isn't that final sentence nice? ("In the pre-Socratic period regally proclaiming certainty; with Socrates childlike questioning uncertainty". Unfortunately I have been unable to think up any rendering of "königlich kündende" which sounds nearly as good.) This hopefully gives some flavor of the sort of daring-to-be-ignorant I have had in mind; certainly, we do not suffer from a shortage of people who dare and succeed in achieving positively staggering feats of ignorance, and they seem only to gain in prominence every time one looks, so I can imagine one's being somewhat put off by this motto. But surely one could say of RFK Jr that he "alles (oder doch genug) zu wissen glaubt", ie he believes that he knows all, or close enough; one of his problems is that he isn't willing to believe that perhaps he doesn't know all there is to know about, I don't know, germs. "nescire aude" doesn't mean "mouth off with confidence"; it means "allow yourself to be curious and try without yet knowing". It means "be open to what you don't yet know, and know that you don't yet know a lot". It is also my attempt to remind myself that—as advertised by the title—what goes up here does not have to be the final, most polished up with a little pumice stone, absolutely masterful thing I have ever done. As the diminishing frequence of posts might attest, I have not succeeded extremely well in this regard. And of course, like Socrates himself, I have married an official stance of openness and willingness to admit ignorance to some awfully strongly held opinions.