agnoiology

{{Short description|Study of ignorance}}

{{about|the 19th-century epistemological theory of ignorance|the 20th-century study of culturally-conditioned ignorance|agnotology}}

Agnoiology (from the Greek ἀγνοέω, meaning ignorance) is the theoretical study of the quality and conditions of ignorance,{{Cite EB1911 |wstitle=Agnoiology |url= |volume=1 |page=378}}{{Cite book|last=Pojman|first=Louis P.|title=The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2015|isbn=978-1-139-05750-9|editor-last=Audi|editor-first=Robert|edition=Third|location=New York City|pages=17|chapter=Agnoiology|oclc=927145544}} and in particular of what can truly be considered "unknowable" (as distinct from "unknown"). The term was coined by James Frederick Ferrier, in his Institutes of Metaphysic (1854),{{cite encyclopedia |year=1930 |title=Agnoiology |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica |edition=14 |volume=1 |page=351 |language=en}} as a foil to the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.Roy Dilley, "The Construction of Ethnographic Knowledge in a Colonial Context", in Ways of Knowing: Anthropological Approaches to Crafting Experience and Knowledge, edited by Mark Harris (New York and Oxford, 2007), pp. 139-140.