It is the admission of ignorance that leads to progress,not so much because the solving of a particular puzzle leads directly to a new piece of understandingbut because the puzzle --if it interests enough scientists -- leads to work.There is a similar phenomenon in entomology know as stigmergy,a term invented by Grasse, which means "to incite to work."When three or four termites are collected together in a chamber they wander about aimlessly,but when more termites are added, they begin to build.It is the presence of other termites, in sufficient numbers at close quarters, that produces the work:they pick up each other's fecal pellets and stack them in neat columns,and when the columns are precisely the right height,the termites reach across and turn the perfect arches that form the foundation of the termitarium.No single termite knows how to do any of this,but as soon as there are enough termites gathered together they become flawless architects,sensing their distances from each other although blind,building an immensely complicated structure with its own air-conditioning and humidity control.They work their lives away in this ecosystem built by themselves.The nearest thing to a termitarium that I can think of in human behavior is the making of language,which we do by keeping at each other all our lives, generation after generation,
