Abstract
In 1918, Lytton Strachey wrote in Eminent Victorians that even a precis of the Victorian age "must fill innumerable volumes" and thus its history would never be written. "For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian—ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art." Each of us can still know as much individually as a person did in Strachey's time. A century later, however, we create about 400 million terabytes of new information each day. In this talk I explore the methodological and disciplinary implications of ignorance, touching on randomness and forecasting, the problem of unprecedented change, and agnotology (the intentional production of ignorance).
Speaker
William J. Turkel is a Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario and a former member of The College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (2018-25). He received the Western Award for Innovations in Technology-Enhanced Teaching in 2021 and has been named one of the first cohort of Western's new Generative AI Teaching Fellows (2025-27). His latest monograph, on Global 21st Century History, is currently under review at McGill-ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Press.
