“Anyone can say they’re absolutely certain. It’s a bit harder to never, ever make any mistakes. Scientists understand the difference, so they don’t say they’re absolutely certain. That’s all. It doesn’t mean that they have any specific reason to doubt a theory—absolutely every scrap of evidence can be going the same way, all the stars and planets l

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The dominant contemporary theory of thinking in the United States assumes that it is possible to build knowledge over time, along with the answers and certainty that it provides. From this point of view, everything about the world can be known, and our job is to acquire enough of this information to establish a working relationship with things as t

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The willingness to admit ignorance. Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus – ‘we do not know’. It assumes that we don’t know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things that we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge. No concept, idea or theory is sacred and beyond challenge. The centrality

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