Uncertainty Isn’t a Human Flaw, It’s a Feature of the World

Lack of certainty is anything but weakness. Instead, it constitutes—and has always constituted—the very strength of rational thinking, understood as curiosity, rebellion, and change. It is precisely by not taking its answers as definitive that science can continue to improve them.

absolute certainty about all aspects of life would be tyranny. So, at a time in our history where we have huge decisions to make—about the climate, about technology, capitalism, democracy—we need our freedom, of thought and action, more than ever. In an age of uncertainty, we have to ask ourselves what we need to be, and what we need to do—and to c

We as scientists spend our lives channeling our curiosity in the service of certainty. Yet along the way, we increasingly embrace uncertainty and celebrate the paths toward understanding, without expecting its conclusive acquisition.

We’re waking up to the reality that uncertainty is not a war to be fought or a disease to be eradicated but an inherent quality of a complex world. We need to cultivate our collective capacity to sit with uncertainty and complexity.