Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Ignorance Unmasked : Essays in the New Science of Agnotology - Robert N. Proctor

Ignorance Unmasked

Essays in the New Science of Agnotology

By: Robert N. Proctor (Editor), Londa Schiebinger (Editor)

Paperback | 16 September 2025

At a Glance

Paperback


$40.69

or 4 interest-free payments of $10.17 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 7 business days

We live in an age of ignorance. This book offers a guide to how we got here—and how we might escape.

From obfuscations of climate science to the myriad deceptions inhering in language, Ignorance Unmasked explores how agnotology—the study of ignorance—can help us better grasp: Why don''t we know what we don''t know? What are the obstacles to knowledge, and how might those be overcome?

Ignorance has countless agents and authors; it gets deliberately manufactured and widely disseminated. In a provocative set of essays, this book engages climate change and public health, algorithmic amplification of misinformation, deep fakes and data obsolescence, the origins of free market fundamentalism and gun industry deceptions, along with the ignorance produced by military trauma, sugar and meat agnotology, environmental malfeasance, and the forgetting of the Nakba. It helps us better understand how and why knowledge gets erased, and how rectifying such ignorance can enlarge human liberties and planetary health.

Contributors: Nadia Abu El-Haj, Daniel Akselrad, Erik M. Conway, John Donohue, Hany Farid, Benjamin Franta, Peter Galison, Jennifer Jacquet, Caroline A. Jones, Robert Lustig, Naomi Oreskes, Robert N. Proctor, Rosemary Sayigh, Londa Schiebinger, and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup

Industry Reviews
"'Agnotology,' [the] science of generating ignorance, has become the most important discipline of the day." -Bruno Latour, Sciences Po, Paris "The essays in Proctor and Schiebinger's spectacular new collection make the concept of agnotology, the creation of ignorance, relevant to the most basic political and scientific battles of the day-from the controversies over the Israeli destruction of Gaza through climate science and food production. This should be read by all social scientists interested in our modern world." -David Rosner, Columbia University "In a world where up is down and down is up, Ignorance Unmasked brings to bear the power of history to dismantle systematically perpetuated ignorance, with each chapter revealing surprising insights into how our world has been built-accidentally and intentionally-to deceive us." -Yogi Hendlin, Erasmus University Rotterdam

More in General & World History

Surveying the Wild Abyss : Unravelling settler memory - Barry Corr
The Coming Storm : Power, Conflict and Warnings from History - Odd Arne Westad
Talking Classics : The Shock of the Old - Mary Beard

RRP $36.99

$29.99

19%
OFF
Entitled : The Rise and Fall of the House of York - Andrew Lownie

RRP $27.99

$23.75

15%
OFF
Lessons of History - Will Durant

RRP $32.99

$20.75

37%
OFF
Say Nothing : True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland - Patrick Radden Keefe
The Happiest Man on Earth - Eddie Jaku

RRP $32.99

$26.99

18%
OFF
The Children of Ash and Elm : A History of the Vikings - Neil Price
The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity - David Graeber
Battle of the Arctic : The Maritime Epic of World War Two - Hugh Sebag Montefiore
Goliath's Curse : The History and Future of Societal Collapse - Luke Kemp
Entitled : The Rise and Fall of the House of York - Andrew Lownie

RRP $37.99

$22.99

39%
OFF
The Golden Road : How Ancient India Transformed the World - William Dalrymple
Revolusi : Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World - David Van Reybrouck