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Are you then frustrated by the uncertainties you face, nagged by a feeling that there must be a correct way but you just do not know what way that is? Do you wish that life have the mathematical certainty of 1+1=2?
You are not alone. We have been conditioned, particularly during science and math classes, to believe there are facts about the world which are certain. Remember the true/false test questions you had in school (Does light travel in straight lines? True/False), and how there is only one right answer?
Because of such training, many have come to expect that science is an endeavour with certain results, and it brings truth. Sorry. Scientific certainty is a myth. In fact, certainty is the opposite of what science does.
“How about mathematics?” I hear you ask. “Are you trying to tell me that the queen of the sciences is not a certain or an exact science?” After all, we had sent man into space with fantastic rockets built using precise engineering calculations, and daily we experience the wonders of science around us, like electrification.
A genius in the 1870s thought the same. Gottlob Frege thought that mathematics was the model for exact unambiguous knowledge. He realised however that it didn’t have an explicit account of basic concepts, such as numbers, and he tried to give it one.
Shall we bring out the champagne to celebrate? Numbers! Of course, we know what numbers are!
So thought Frege too, victoriously publishing his proof only to have Oxford mathematician Bertrand Russell point out a paradox in his concept of numbers. To cut a long story short, it ruined his life and humanity has been plagued ever since by the shaky foundations of mathematics.
If even mathematics is uncertain, don’t you think you are asking too much when you expect certainty in your life? Even when the sciences produce clear and replicable results, it often only happens in the confines of the laboratory. The real world is far more complicated.
Engineers know this well. That is why when they build machines and structures, they do not just rely on what the equations tell them. They throw in a generous safety factor. It would be heavier and cost more, but at least they can sleep well at night, knowing they have compensated for unexpected factors that do occur in reality.
How about us? Clearly, we need to steel ourselves against the vagaries of life. Renowned existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre told a story about a man torn between serving his country during a war or staying home to comfort his sick mother. This is a not a scientific problem. Most questions we encounter in real life aren’t scientific ones.
Does philosophy have an answer for us? The morality of sympathy and devotion to one’s love ones, and the morality of duty and patriotism to one’s country, conflict.
Perhaps religion might. How about the Christian doctrine of loving others as we love ourselves? Should the man love his mother and stay, or love his brothers-in-arms and go?
What he is confronted with is existential angst. But choose he must. And he must do so in the face of incomplete information, since the future is unknowable.
Our world is full of uncertainty. But we need not despair. Uncertainty also means possibilities, from the banal to the life changing. Coffee or tea? How about an abortion? Should we rise up to fight injustice? Should we give up and die?
Once again, science is of no help – these are not scientific questions. But first, let us realise that to expect scientific certainty is absurd. Not only is there no such thing, the truly important questions we face in life are not scientific questions that we can resolve by a series of calculations.
We can certainly be guided by science or religious belief and so on, but ultimately, it is we who have to decide. Sartre writes: “[Man] makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality.”
The price of freedom is uncertainty. Instead of frustration, let us embrace that uncertainty and find in ourselves the courage and wisdom to decide how to live. Know that life and the human condition is not predetermined. There is not just one right way. We can make of our lives what we will. Now that’s a reason to celebrate. Cheers!
This article has been published in the Dec 2019 edition of Zeitgeist
Want to find out more?
Skorupski, John. English-Language Philosophy 1750-1945. A History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2011/09/tantalizing-ambiguity/
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
Appleyard, Bryan. “Science and Certainty.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 96, no. 383 (2007): 235–44.
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