Ranulph Glanville: The Cybernetician of the Black Box of Second-order Unknowing

摘要

Seven years ago I wrote a little article called Ranulph Glanville: "The Cybernetician of Ignorance" (Brier, 2008). I had the famous book Docta Ignoranta by Nicolaus Cusanus about learned ignorance in mind, when I coined the title. I was thinking of a similarity between radical constructivism and the adage that inspired Cusanus' title, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's advice to his reader to "strive upwards unknowingly." In spite of all the knowledge we have gathered since then, it is still pretty much the situation we are in and it is a realization that is at the core of Ranulph Glanville's work.