ABSTRACT
In 1977 a publication appeared called the Encyclopaedia of Ignorance; it contained fifty essays from prominent writers outlining the lack of knowledge in the natural sciences. Scientists, who are sometimes in the habit of dropping the word ‘theory’ from their ideas, were confronted yet again with the enormous number of unknowns in a subject area in which measurement is considered a very precise art. As the editors remarked in their foreword (1) ‘Compared to the pond of knowledge, our ignorance remains atlantic. Indeed the horizon of the unknown recedes as we approach it’.
