Friday, July 27, 2012

Conquering Ignorance

Hayek:
In one sense the saying that our civilization rests on the conquest of ignorance is of course a mere platitude.  Yet our very familiarity with it tends to conceal from us what is most important in it: namely that civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess.  And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering ignorance, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and remains widely dispersed among individuals. [Rules and Order, p. 15]

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