nescience

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The absence of knowledge, especially of orthodox beliefs.

   “Better to have honest nescience than to have militant ignorance.”

   “To lapse from knowledge into nescience is always possible—there is no law of God or man forbidding it.”

   “Many a day we had been twenty-two out of the twenty-four hours in the saddle, each taking it in turn to lead through the darkness while the others let their heads nod forward over the pommel in nescience.”

   “Algernon, in a condition of masculine nescience, lets himself become engaged to a woman of whom he knows nothing.”

2. (countable, uncountable)The doctrine that nothing is actually knowable.

   “The theory of nescience is but the obverse of the fact of science.”