e like to think about what we know more than about what we do not know," said President Lee C. Bollinger in addressing approximately 220 doctoral degree recipients and 1,100 master's degree awardees and their families and friends in an overflowing Hill Auditorium on May 2. "We admire ourselves for all the knowledge we have acquired; I want, in contrast, to praise our ignorance, and to maintain that ignorance--or becoming comfortable with our ignorance—often has as much a role in real human creativity, in new discovery, as knowledge or being proud about our degree of knowledge."

Citing examples of artists, historians, scientists and poets, Bollinger argued that "it is easy to rely on what we know" and to grow "slack in inquiring into new evidence which is sometimes right before our noses and ought to compel us ... to look at old evidence in a new way."

"Nurture an appetite for being puzzled, for being confused, indeed for being openly stupid, and that--despite what you might think—is very difficult, especially when your egos invest so heavily in your status as an expert," Bollinger advised.

"We all know the cliché that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It is also true that a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing as well." It's hard to break out of the bounds imposed by deep knowledge, he continued, hard to "reassemble the patterns within which we see the world. Yet, there is a moment typically when we cross from ignorance into knowledge in which there is the greatest possibility of reorganizing and reconceiving the knowledge we inherit. In that moment of freshness our ignorance is, in a sense, our anchor to the new truth or the new insight."

Citing Thomas Kuhn's observation in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that the ways in which some individuals create new paradigms from the same scientific evidence that others interpret conventionally must "remain inscrutable," Bollinger said that "what we do know, is that this occurs most frequently just at the moment of transition-and maybe partial transmission--from ignorance to knowledge. We are then freer to think revolutionary thoughts, before the chains of knowledge settle upon us. So what does all this mean for you? It means that there are many reasons for celebrating not only all the knowledge and expertise you have acquired but also the ignorance you take with you."

Bollinger said that he would be going too far if he asserted that the University was "leaving you with just the right amount of ignorance as we send you on your way today." But the University was proud, he concluded, "to send you off into the world as graduates of the University of Michigan, as likely as anyone in this country to use your ignorance as well as your knowledge for creative ends."