ungewissen

Ungewissen is a neologism used in discussions of knowledge and ignorance to denote a state or class of information that is not yet known to an agent, but potentially knowable under suitable conditions. The word blends the prefix un- "not" with the German noun Wissen "knowledge," producing a term that can be rendered roughly as "not knowing" or "unknown knowledge." It is not a standard term in mainstream philosophy, but it appears in occasional scholarly articles and in speculative fiction to illustrate epistemic limits or information gaps.

In epistemology, ungewissen is used to model gaps in an agent's knowledge that are not simply false beliefs but lack of information that could be obtained. It helps distinguish between what is known, what is unknown to the agent, and what is unknowable given current methods or constraints. In data science, it can describe features or outcomes for which there is no data or insufficient evidence to draw conclusions, highlighting the difference between unobserved variables and observed uncertainty.

Critics argue that, as a coinage, ungewissen risks ambiguity and redundancy with established terms like ignorance, unknowns, or epistemic gaps. Proponents say it raises attention to systematic limits in inquiry and to the dynamic growth of knowledge as new data emerge.

Related concepts include ignorance, unknown unknowns, epistemic horizon, and data gaps.