Knowledge and Computing: Computer Epistemology and Constructive Skepticism

Chapter 4. How Uncertain is Uncertainty?

Chapter 4 How Uncertain is Uncertainty? Solum certum nihil esse certi Nothing is certain but uncertainty Pliny, the elder, Historia Naturalis 4.1. A Long story of Uncertainty about Uncertainty 4.1.1. they have nO sCienCe? We are unable to get deep into the minds of our ancestors. Nevertheless , we can draw some hypotheses on their beliefs, on their view about the world order, mirrored in their fantasy. With some certainty, we can state that most of the events and circumstances were uncertain for them, especially from our point of view. The difference in definition is relevant for the whole essay. What i take as certain, can be uncertain for any contemporary and even more for somebody living in the future and possessing much deeper knowledge about the phenomena. Fuzzy end i3 Vámos.indb 109 2/5/10 4:11:06 PM 110 KNOWLEDGE AND COMPUTING The world was almost totally uncertain for those who had to transfer all causes to imagined beings. Centuries of rites and traditions of transition and continuation have rendered even the most certain event, death, ambiguous. That primitive looking manner of burial cults survives still in more sublime forms of current highbrow civilizations. Tales, sculptural figures, and preserved folklore all testify the hypothesis that ancient man, due to a general feeling of uncertainty— exposed to fire, wars, famine, epidemics, disasters of natural environment —was much more hysteric than the everyman of today. Horrors of the past and present i3 Vámos.indb 110 2/5/10 4:11:07 PM 111 How Uncertain is Uncertainty? Continuity and change can be perceived by a quotation from the silver age of Antiquity, about 200 CE, written by one of the Fathers of the Church, Tertullian: if you look at the world as a whole, you cannot doubt that it has grown progressively more cultivated and populated. Every territory is now accessible, every territory explored, every territory opened to commerce, the most delightful farmsteads have obliterated areas formerly waste, plough-land has subdued the woods, domestic cattle have put to flight the wild beast, barren sands have become fertile, rocks are reduced to soil, swamps are drained, the number of cities today’s exceeds the number of isolated huts in former times, islands no longer inspire fear nor crags terror: everywhere people, everywhere organized communities , everywhere human life. most convincing as evidence of populousness, we men have actually become a burden to the Earth, the fruits of nature hardly suffice to sustain us, there is a general pressure of scarcity giving rise to complaints, since the Earth can no longer support us. Need we be astonished that plague and famine, warfare and earthquake come to be regarded as remedies, serving as it were to trim and prune the superfluity of population? (quoted by Cochrane, 1942) This mixture of mysticism and observation was true through the middle Ages; Huizinga (1937) described it with lively documentation. The divorce of uncertainty and certainty started with science. science , interpreted in our sense, with reference to the Greek enlightenment , as it was interpreted in the first chapter. Generally speaking , until the high period of the Greek philosophy, people of the mediterranean and Eastern civilizations observed plenty of remarkable phenomena and tried to register them in some order. A few of these observations can be considered of scientific character still in our eyes, but these people regarded the phenomenological facts as naturally given realities (all kind of spirits and gods included) and had no curiosity to search for further causes, interactions, generalizations , especially not in the frames of an organized, culturally adopted and critical search discipline. i3 Vámos.indb 111 2/5/10 4:11:07 PM 112 KNOWLEDGE AND COMPUTING This means, for the advanced Greeks, what could be included into the frame of their contemporary science was structured and disciplined in a new edifice of science; and all the rest formed the uncertain realm of non-science—beliefs, religions, curiosities. in that evolving rationalism, combined with the mythical foggy environment of the Pythagorean age, not even science and arts were separated. According to a witty remark of russell, Pythagoras could have been some kind of a mixture of Einstein and mary Eddy baker, the 19th century founder of Christian science. We should add schönberg, who constructed phonetic harmonies based on his mathematical-physical studies but added conscious and unconscious creativity in composing affectionate music. The problem...