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Limits to Knowledge

Skeptics & Atheists

"We grow up thinking more is known than actually is," says Ralph Gomory, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Because that belief can trigger misconceptions about the natural world, Mr. Gomory launched the foundation's program in Limits to Knowledge.

"It's hard to get researchers interested in the question of what's unknowable, since they are much more oriented to pushing the frontiers of knowledge," he says. Nevertheless, quite a few are taking the puzzle seriously.

Science's Big Query: What Can We Know, and What Can't We?