Forbidden Knowledge

1
Forbidden Knowledge

• What Do I Know?
• -Montaigne

2
The Six Types of Forbidden Knowledge

1. Inaccessible, Unattainable Knowledge
2. Knowledge Prohibited by Divine, Religious, Moral,
   or Secular Authority
3. Dangerous, Destructive, or Unwelcome Knowledge
4. Fragile, Delicate Knowledge
5. Knowledge Double-Bound
6. Ambiguous Knowledge

3
Inaccessible Unattainable

• Portée
• I know only that I do not know.
• -Socrates
• The most incomprehensible thing about the
  universe is that it is comprehensible.
• -Einstein
• Individuum est ineffabile.
• -Goethe

4
Prohibited by Divine, Religious, Moral, or
Secular Authority

• Examples of prohibited knowledge
• The paradox of prohibited knowledge
• Forbede us thyng,
• And that desiren we.
• -Chaucer (The Wife of Baths Tale)

5
Dangerous, Destructive, or Unwelcome Knowledge

• Playing with Fire
• Descended from apes! My dear, let us hope that it
  is not true, but that if it is, let us pray that
  it will not become generally known.
• -Milner, qtd. in Shattuck 2

6
Fragile, Delicate Knowledge

• Individuum est ineffabile.
• -Goethe
• BUT
• What happens when we attempt to gain this
  ineffable knowledge, when individuum est
  effabile?

7
Knowledge Double-Bound

• The groundwork, therefore, of all true philosophy
  is the full apprehension of the difference
  between . . . that intuition of things which
  arises when we possess ourselves, as one with the
  whole . . . and that which presents itself when
  . . .we think of ourselves as separated beings,
  and place nature in antithesis to the mind. As
  object to subject.
• -Wordsworth (The Friend)

8
Ambiguous Knowledge

• O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
• That all this good of evil shall produce,
• And evil turn to good . . .
• -Milton (Paradise Lost)

9
The Fortunate Fall
10

• Of every tree of the garden thou may freely eat
  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
  evil, thou shall not eat of it for in the day
  that thou eat thereof thou shall surely die.
• -Genesis 322

11

• Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make
  you free.
• -John 832