The Infinity of Ignorance
We resemble a black man in a black cellar searching for a black hat
Letters from Vienna #6
Around the corner from a giant second-hand store run by the Caritas, a cinema which shows artsy films and not far removed from where Falco lived, Schubert died and Mozart premiered the “Magic Flute”, there is a carpenter’s workshop where Karl Popper built a walnut veneer wall cabinet with drawers and learned how to philosophise.
“When I was twenty I became apprenticed to an old master cabinetmaker in Vienna whose name was Adalbert Pösch, and I worked with him from 1922 to 1924, not long after the First World War. He looked exactly like Georges Clemenceau, but he was a very mild and kind man. After I had gained his confidence he would often, when we were alone in his workshop, give me the benefit of his inexhaustible store of knowledge. Once he told me that he had worked for many years on various models of a perpetual motion machine, adding musingly: “They say you can’t make it; but once it’s been made they’ll talk different!” (“Da sag’n s’ dass ma’ so was net mach’n kann; aber wann amal eina ein’s g’macht hat, dann wer’n s’ schon anders red’n!”) A favourite practice of his was to ask me a historical question and to answer it himself when it turned out that I did not know the answer (although I, his pupil, was a University student—a fact of which he was very proud). “And do you know”, he would ask, “who invented topboots? You don’t? It was Wallenstein, the Duke of Friedland, during the Thirty Years War.” After one or two even more difficult questions, posed by himself and triumphantly answered by himself, my master would say with modest pride: “There, you can ask me whatever you like: I know everything.” (“Da können S’ mi’ frag’n was Sie woll’n: ich weiss alles.”)“
„I believe I learned more about the theory of knowledge from my dear omniscient master Adalbert Pösch than from any other of my teachers. None did so much to turn me into a disciple of Socrates. For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realising more fully the infinity of my ignorance.”[1]
Popper once employed an image of Beckettian despair: that our condition of ignorance is such that we resemble a black man in a black cellar searching for a black hat. We might reach in one direction and then another but each time we merely find that the hat isn’t there.
There might be truth for Popper, a certain statement might well correspond to a certain reality: a cat may well indeed sit on a mat, but there can never be certainty and we must accept this unhappy fact. The only certainty is our own ignorance.
Even if a theory is extremely well corroborated, so Popper, such as either Newton’s and Einstein’s theories are, neither of them remain certain. Both can, theoretically at least, be falsified. Science is, for Popper, a critical method, a search for the truth, a journey if you will and never a destination.
For Popper: “Essentially, there are three views in the theory of knowledge: (1) An optimistic view: We are capable of understanding the world. (2) A pessimistic view: Mankind is incapable of gaining any knowledge. This is the view that nowadays is referred to as scepticism. (3) The third view is that of scepticism (skeptomai = to examine, reflect, enquire) in the original sense of the “middle Academy”. This is also the view of the pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes: We do not possess a criterion of truth, nor do we have any certain knowledge; but we can search and by searching we may eventually find something better. According to this form of scepticism, it is possible for our knowledge to grow.”[2]
For Popper: “a theory is something our understanding attempts to prescribe to nature; it is, however, a prescription that nature does not always tolerate; it is a hypothesis created by our understanding, but…it is not necessarily successful. A hypothesis that we try to force on nature may be defeated by nature.”[3]
“In the 1920s I realised for the first time the significance of the Einsteinian revolution for epistemology. If Newton’s theory, which had been subjected to the most severe tests and had been corroborated better than any scientist could ever have dreamt of, was shown to be an uncertain and temporary hypothesis, it was hopeless ever to expect any physical theory to attain more than hypothetical status.”[4]
“…even for the empirically most successful theory T1 (that is, for an allegedly certain and inductively justified or established – or confirmed – theory), there may well be a competing theory T2 such that, on the one hand, T2 is logically inconsistent with T1 (so that at least one of the two must be false) and, on the other hand, T2 has been corroborated by all the previous experiments corroborating T1. In other words, though mutually inconsistent, T1 and T2 may nonetheless lead to empirically indistinguishable predictions within arbitrarily large regions and within any such region, both may be highly corroborated.”
“Since the two theories T1 and T2 are mutually inconsistent, evidently they cannot both be “certain”. Thus, even the most thoroughly corroborated theory can never be certain: our theories are fallible and will remain fallible, even when exceedingly well-corroborated.”
“At that time, I read through Einstein’s writings, hoping to find this consequence of his revolution in his work. What I did find was his paper Geometrie und Erfahrung, in which he wrote: “In so far as the statements of mathematics speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality.””
“At first, I generalised from mathematics to science in general: “In so far as scientific statements speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality.”[5]
Thus, logically speaking, “following the science” is wonderful in principle but extremely difficult in practice. It is, above all else, next to impossible to build any political policy upon “the science” since this is never certain and forever shifting in various directions, much like quicksand. Political decisions need to be based on other, preferably humane, democratic and constitutional, principles and in scientific questions in particular, such as those which affect public health, the lessons learned from experience need to be applied. Dogmatists need to be exposed for what they are: liars, charlatans and frauds.
[1] p.1 Unended Quest An Intellectual Autobiography by Karl Popper
[2] (p. 32) The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge by Karl Popper.
[3] (p. 34) Ibid
[4] (p.35) Ibid
[5] (p.36-37) Ibid