It's time to embrace uncertainty

It's time to embrace uncertainty Susanne Moore argues in today's Guardian:
"The world is full of people proclaiming about stuff they don't know much about. My trade depends on it. Pundits, politicians and economists, too, all depend on some kind of bladder-busting meta-analysis to keep us quiet. In fact, they are just winging it ...

What is valued is certainty. What is devalued in such a world is uncertainty. Those who aren't sure are weak. Poor. Faithless. Uncertainty is often worrying and feminised. Real men know real things ...

How weighed down is public life with its emphasis on certainty. How dumbed down is belief. The big divides are not between different beliefs, but the differing degree of certitude in which those beliefs are held.

No one knows. No one has the answers. Uncertainty is where we are. It is to be embraced."

I agree with Moore's basic thesis and recently highlighted another comment piece in the Guardian in which Jenni Russell made similar points and concluded: "We should be more willing to admit that the complexity of the world means those leading us will make mistakes."

However, in this post I want to question the assumptions made here about belief. Moore wrote that "those who most understand the value of uncertainty are scientists," highlighting the comment piece in the Guardian by "the delightful" Jon Butterworth on Tuesday. Butterworth set up a contrast between science and belief: "We should all know that science is a betting system, not a belief system. Near-certainty arises from a morass of uncertainty, it does not drop from heaven gift-wrapped."

Like Richard Dawkins, Butterworth argues that science is superior to belief but they use opposite arguments to reach the same conclusion. Dawkins argues that science is evidence based while belief is not and therefore is uncertain, Butterworth argues that belief is about given certainties while science honestly accepts and values uncertainty. Belief is therefore damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

The reality is that science works with both - uncertainty and evidence - as also does belief. It is the unnecessary opposing of science and belief in both Dawkins and Butterworth that provides a note of certainty (and therefore falsity) in what they write. Their certitude comes from their belief that scientific knowledge is better than the knowledge which comes through religious belief. This certitude is a belief because it cannot be proved. Therefore, Moore's comment that, "The big divides are not between different beliefs, but the differing degree of certitude in which those beliefs are held," which seems aimed at those holding religious beliefs would also seem applicable to Dawkins and Butterworth. A fuller embrace of uncertainty would seem to understand that, as Polanyi argued, all knowing is ultimately faith-based.

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Sam Phillips - Gimme Some Truth.