A Radical Distrust in Certainty
I’m a bit too snowed-under these past few days to post much. So here is something from the archives, a quote from Carlo Rovelli’s Reality Is Not What It Seems, a book about quantum gravity, which I thought was a great summary of science:
Though rooted in previous knowledge, science is an adventure based on continuous change. The story I have told reaches back over millennia, tracing a narrative of science that has treasured good ideas, but hasn’t hesitated to throw ideas away when something was found that worked better. The nature of scientific thinking is critical, rebellious, and dissatisfied with a priori conceptions, reverence, and sacred or untouchable truth. The search for knowledge is not nourished by certainty: it is nourished by a radical distrust in certainty.