"The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa" stated the physicist Werner Heisenberg, in what would become to be known as his Uncertainty Principle. Finally, quantum physics had confirmed what the philosophers always knew: Uncertainty is everywhere. Every individual encounters uncertainty; what separates us is how we choose to respond. Current and soon-graduating students can definitely relate. After the initial University thrill, you begin to feel the nausea of uncertainty during our collegiate hangover. We are told to make judgments in this ambivalence, taking precise aim in the darkness for a target we do not see, shooting for a reason we do not know.
In this limited space, I will briefly discuss epistemological uncertainty. That is, uncertainty about knowledge and what we know, In his subtly powerful work, "On Certainty," philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein investigates the nature of the certainty problem. When we say we "know" something, we merely mean "we are aware of" or "we think" it. But whether something is certain is beyond our immediate grasp. For example, you know that you study in an institution in the United States, a country in the Western Hemisphere that was founded after a Revolutionary War. You do know these things, but are they true? To assert them as certain requires some belief from the source of information. So even when learning the most basic concepts, there is a struggle between faith and doubt. "What I know, I believe" says Wittgenstein - knowing anything is inherently uncertain.
This uncertainty is just a concept, possibly just a word or feeling. But uncertainty affects us in our decisions and the inferences and speculations we constantly make. Initially, this notion seems troubling: The surest of philosophers can only conjecture, a brilliant economist estimates and even precise scientific measurements rely on probabilities. Everywhere we lack exactness. For instance, it is difficult to fully comprehend an issue or understand a person, for we can only discuss what we know, and of what we know we may not be certain. Our initial judgments are often embarrassingly ignorant. For example, calling someone "superficial" only fulfills our hypocrisy.
If our decisions are flawed, it is our mutability, our ability to change our minds that is beautiful. So often it is the second hypothesis, based on additional data, which propels us toward truth. It is essential to combat our fluctuating uncertainties with adjustable responses. This fact has always been known, from Hamlet to Hemingway, but adolescence is when we fully embrace the concept.\nNow, all students know that any problem becomes more difficult when you add a dimension of time. Borrowing an old phrase, the physicist Niels Bohr used to joke: "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." Indeed, making a choice about something uncertain now, like whether O'Hill will have good lunch, becomes almost immediately irrelevant. It is our foresight that is strained the most by uncertainty.
Personally, I always ignored the clich
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