Areas of ignorance are never really resolved through research and science—they merely shift:

“From a suitable distance, we cannot soundly claim that the historic development of science has proved nature to be understand in a unique way…. What has happened is that the ground of the unknown has continually been shifted, the allegory has continually changed (Holton, 1965, xxiii)

Areas of ignorance remain constant in size. If this is so, then ambiguity and ambivalence of conceptual orientation will be more adaptive and accurate than clarity and certainty.

Nevertheless, sometimes clear and unambiguous concepts are needed in order to get certain kinds of things done. That is, we need to leave out, from time to time, the vagaries and exceptions that lend ambiguity to our observations and formulations. This constitutes a tool-oriented notion of conceptualization. This is fine, so long as we don’t reify the reductive methodology itself.

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Holton, G. 1965. Introduction to the issue ’science and culture’. Daedalus 94: v-xxix.