on the shoulders of giants

i resorted to rumsfeldian diction in updating colleagues about the suddenly roiling financial waters of the minnversity. you know the quote:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." - Donald H. Rumsfeld (2002), "Defense Department Briefing."

joe theory points out that secretary rumsfeld must've been cribbing from robert merton (as we all have from time to time):

"In anything but a paradoxical sense, newly acquired knowledge produces newly acquired ignorance. For the growth of knowledge and understanding within a field of inquiry brings with it the growth of specifiable and specified ignorance: a new awareness of what is not yet known or understood and a rationale for its being worth the knowing." - Robert K. Merton (1981), "Remarks on Theoretical Pluralism."