The Importance of Uncertainty

Further to my earlier post on Islam and science, it has to be said that there's no great mystery as to why the Muslim world has such a poor record, or why the 57 countries of the OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) could not, between them, produce one university capable of making the top 500 World Universities. If the answers to all of life's problems are contained in what was communicated to a man in a cave in Arabia by a supreme deity some 1400 years ago, and if the purpose of our existence is merely to submit to those teachings, then that, curiosity-wise, is effectively that.

Islam's by no means the exception though. When you look around at the range of human societies throughout history, it's striking how widespread, if not universal, that lack of curiosity is: how certain they all were, each in their own different way, that they knew the answers. There should be a law - I'll call it Hartley's Law - that ignorance expands to fill the space available. When a new tribe's discovered deep in the rain forest, they don't rush up to seek enlightenment from the intrepid traveller who's just stumbled into their encampment - "Man, are we glad to see you! Stuck here in this forest, we don't really have a clue what's going on. We survive, yes, but to be honest it's a hand to mouth existence. With your fancy equipment it's obvious that you come from a more advanced society. Please... we have all these questions. What's with the moon, and why does it wax and wane? Where does the river start, and where does it go to? Where do animals come from? Where do we come from?" Far from it: they already have all the answers, and aren't the least bit interested in what anyone else might have to say. Of course the moon escaped into the sky when the father sun copulated with the great mother waters and gave birth to the heavens, while the stars are the semen of the Great Fish Bukumbo. Everyone knows that! Talk to the local shaman and it won't be - "Frankly, that stuff about the Crocodile god encircling the Great Fish and getting impregnated by the Juju bird was always something of an ad hoc story - an interim solution really, just, you know, until we could find something more plausible. It satisfied the kids, but, to be honest, the whole metaphysical under-pinning of our culture was beginning to look a little creaky." On the contrary, there won't be a shred of doubt in his mind. The more backward the culture, the more certain they'll be in their own beliefs, and the less interested in any alternatives. It's doubt, uncertainty, which is the mark of a sophisticated culture capable of growth and development.

This certainty is often romanticised. It's a cliché by now in travel journals, started I think by writers like Redmond O'Hanlon, though its roots go back earlier (Man Friday? Tonto?): the pathetic Westerner as a figure of fun who can't do anything and couldn't survive ten minutes on his own in the jungle, being rescued by the supremely competent native, who knows instinctively what to eat, how to cure all ailments, how to catch supper, cook it, make a shelter for the night, while carrying a two-hundred-pound rucksack and stopping the Westerner from falling into the river, getting bitten by tsetse flies, getting stung by snakes and spiders - all the while laughing uproariously at how stupid white people are.

That increasing tendency for the middle-aged to refuse to grow up is usually decried as a particular feature of the baby-boomer generation, still wearing jeans and trying to keep up with the latest music, as well as being a sign of how decadent and divorced from the natural world we are, but it's surely more of a positive than a negative development. It's a necessary adaptation. For a start there are the rapid technological changes which mean there's increasing pressure to keep learning: there's also, in a society which is evidence-based rather than faith-based, a constant requirement, as science progresses, to readjust our understanding of the world - most significantly and challengingly nowadays with regard to evolution, as the full repercussions of Darwin's theories sink in. The old Victorian paterfamilias, sure of his own authority and of the truth of the Revealed Word, is no longer a tenable option. He's become a figure of ridicule.

What it is, it's psychological neoteny. Just as humans, according to some theories, are neotenous apes, ie apes that are in a permanent condition of childhood (I wrote about it here, as part of a post on the Aquatic Ape hypothesis) so, now, we're developing a society where psychologically we never grow up. It's a paradox: the more advanced we become, the more childlike we become. The development of science and of enlightenment values depend on encouraging uncertainty.

Well, that's one theory, anyway. To be honest I have my doubts.

Comments

[Richard Dell]

Indeed.

One problem with the demise of scientific training in Britain, as well as elsewhere, is the failure to appreciate the significance of evidence (as a scientist would say) or facts (as the rest of us would say). To the scientist, a single fact that does not conform to a theory means, without exception, that the theory is flawed or incomplete. To the rest of us this means the theory is wrong.

However to the Socialist, the Marxist, the Islamist, Johann Hari, Suemus Milne, Noam Chomsky, etc., a contradictory fact is something required to be swept under the carpet, dismissed, or in the last resort, the character (or in extreme cases the physical) assassination of the messenger. Theory rules.

I consider this human trait to be a case of evolution in progress. There is a beetle that has a defence mechanism of flipping itself on its back and playing dead. However, should you put it hack on its feet, it immediately flips again, proving that it is not dead. It is very unlikely to have met creatures who right it, and so has never had to perfect its tactic. The resolution of our own weakness of doublethink may involve a lot of bloodshed.

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." - William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

[DaninVan]

"However, should you put it hack on its feet, it immediately flips again, proving that it is not dead." Crikey! Sounds just like 'Conspiracy Theorists'...;)

[dearieme]

How do you see the Pseudo-Sciences fitting in? You know, Marxism, Freudianism, Climate Science.....

[James Hamilton]

That's a really interesting point you make there about a link between apparent failure to grow up and a changing society that rewards continued learning and openness to it - don't think I've seen that idea anywhere before.