"...there are known knowns; there are
things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is
to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also
unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." Donald Rumsfeld (b.1932) was Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford (1975-1977) and again under George W. Bush (2001-2006). This quotation is from the Transcript of Defense Department Briefing, February 12, 2002. Rumsfeld became so associated with these un/knowns, that he used it as the title for his autobiography:  The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek took Rumsfeld's philosophy seriously: "What Rumsfeld forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the 'unknown knowns' - things we don't know that we know, all the unconscious beliefs and prejudices that determine how we perceive reality and intervene in it." [Slavoj Zizek: Rumsfeld and the bees] |
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