Unknown Unknowns: The Problem of Hypocognition

In 1806, entrepreneur Frederic Tudor sailed to the island of Martinique with a precious cargo. He had harvested ice from frozen Massachusetts rivers and expected to make a tidy profit selling it to tropical customers. There was only one problem: the islanders had never seen ice….

Hypocognition, a term introduced to modern behavioral science by anthropologist Robert Levy, means the lack of a linguistic or cognitive representation for an object, category, or idea.

Read the full article on the publisher’s site: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/unknown-unknowns-the-problem-of-hypocognition/