ABSTRACT
The most prominent manifestation of intrasystemic ignorance is the concept of risk as situated in an impossible to know future. Ignorance of the future is a ‘uniquely common’ way in which every system familiarises itself with its limitations. While future as ignorance affects all systems, the future of each system is unique to each system. This is exemplified in the way every system situates its own future within its present and attempts to deal with it on the basis of its operations. This normal inclusion of the environment of the system within the system, in the form of a divinable part of the systemic horizon, is what I will be exploring in this chapter. Operationally, the future here appears as a generalisation of the concept of unutterance, since they both are attempts by the system to accommodate its environment within its boundaries. The fact that this operation is necessarily accompanied by uncertainty is a confirmation of the inevitable concession to incommunicability as the way to approach environmental ignorance.
