Ignoramus et ignorabimus

Ignoramus et ignorabimus (Latin for " We do not know and we will never know ") is a statement of the physiologist Emil Heinrich Du Bois -Reymond, who has become known as an expression of skepticism about the declaration claims of the natural sciences. The full quote is:

"Compared to the riddles of the corporeal world of the naturalist has long been accustomed to be with male renunciation, ignoramus ' pronounce. Looking back on the winning path traveled by him shall take into account the silent consciousness that where he does not know now, he could do under certain circumstances at least, and perhaps will one day know. Compared to the puzzle but what matter and force are, and how they are able to think, he must once and for all to the much harder to be delivered verdict decide: Ignorabimus. '"

Du Bois -Reymond expressed the words for the first time in 1872 in the paper " On the limits of the knowledge of nature ," which he ( GDNÄ ) held at the meeting of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians in Leipzig. Du Bois -Reymond postulates two fundamental limitations of the knowledge of nature: unknowable could be attributed to the nature of matter and force, on the other hand the ratio, are in the states of consciousness to its material conditions.

In his 1880 held in Berlin in front of the Royal Academy of Sciences lecture "The Seven Welträthsel " he distinguishes - as the title suggests - a total of seven world puzzles, in which it owns some of fundamentally unsolvable. Du Bois - Reymond's theses received great attention and have been very controversial. Ernst Haeckel's successful book " The Welträthsel " as a response to the theses of du Bois -Reymond.

The Göttingen mathematician David Hilbert countered by saying: " We must know, we will know. . "

Even today there are in the philosophy of mind - and especially in the qualia debate - many reactions to the ignoramus et ignorabimus speech, as du Bois- Reymond held the awareness of fundamentally inexplicable. He claimed:

" What conceivable connection between certain movements of certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, on the other hand, the original for me, not definable on, not wegzuleugnenden facts, I feel pain, I feel like; I taste sweet, smell the scent of roses, hear sound of the organ, see Roth ... ' "

In more recent times about Peter Bieri and Hans Flohr took this attitude position - the first affirmative, the second negative.