ignorance as part of delusion

I've been very slowly working my way through an essay by Nikola Tesla. I don't know much about Tesla, though it seems he was quite an ambitious and persistent fellow. While I way address the content of that work more thoroughly later, my interest presently is to textually pursue a train of thought brought on by Tesla quoting Buddha, "Ignorance is the greatest evil in the world."

Buddhism makes use of an epistemological methodology quite estranged in my society of residence. The quote comes in a portion of essay concerned with limiting those aspects of humanity which decrease our access to energy and progress; so a Buddhist epistemology may provide useful insight as to how ignorance produces the evil which ever limits human potential.

[I will presently compose my thesis. This will then be contrasted to some rudimentary research I'll do on ignorance in Buddhism.]

In failing to diligently separate experience from abstraction, many cognitively confuse the two. Consider how the scientific method empirically separates experience from abstraction, while the human scientist may not always.

What does it mean to know? Novel treatments for contemporary diseases--often discovered through accident--are commonly later better understood as accompanied by side effects. Prescriptions treating mental disorders illustrate this evil of ignorance. (And in the development of this evidence of the thesis, please excuse a lack of concision)