“Uncertainty is what tells you that science is reliable. It’s the people who are absolutely certain that you have to watch out for.” — Stuart Firestein

The physician-scientist Tony Fauci is having a rough week. His newly revealed diary has even disappointed traditional allies at The Atlantic and The New Yorker who see the hitherto liberal saint of the pandemic as both too intimate with power and too certain of his scientific assumptions.

Fauci’s fellow American scientist, Stuart Firestein, is having a better week. The Columbia neurobiologist has a new book out today, It Could Be Otherwise, which is a manifesto against scientific certainty. It’s the certain ones you have to watch out for, Firestein warns about those scientists intoxicated with the certainty of their own doctrines.

Science, Firestein argues, requires a blend of hubris and humility. So the great Isaac Newton needed real chutzpah to claim to understand the mind of the creator with only a few equations. The expert is, by definition, riddled by doubt. They should be the most uncertain person in the room. Thus for Firestein, Charles Darwin is a greater scientist than Albert Einstein because Darwin’s theory of life is premised on randomness.

So will contemporary science appear quaintly medieval in 500 years? Will 26th century man think of Darwin and Einstein like we moderns patronize Aristotle? Probably, Firestein suggests. In his Columbia course on ignorance, he tells his students that getting an A requires getting an F. We should all be so ignorant.

Five Takeaways

• Watch Out for the Certain Ones. Science needs hubris and humility — but the real expert is the most uncertain person in the room. Certainty grows with distance from knowledge.

• True Enough. Nature’s editor, asked how many published papers would prove wrong: “All of them.” Unsettled science is not unsound science. Revision is a victory.

• Two Kinds of Uncertainty. 90% of hypertension is idiopathic — and nine drug families treat it anyway. We thrive without knowing.

• Berlin, Darwin, and the Fox. Value pluralism, not relativism. And Darwin over Einstein: complexity from randomness — seven minutes of orbit and the dinosaurs survive.

• When AI Learns to Be Uncertain. You can’t smell Claude in the essays anymore. But until AI weighs possibilities instead of issuing verdicts, it isn’t intelligent.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy It Could Be Otherwise: hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stuart-firestein/it-could-be-otherwise/9781541606739

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: Fauci’s diary and the certainty problem
00:02:48 Should scientists be more careful?
00:03:21 Hubris and humility: Newton’s nerve
00:04:57 Science as the theology of the 21st century
00:05:43 Exams, journalists, and the one right answer
00:07:14 Ignorance: how it drives science
00:07:46 Truth with a small t: “true enough”
00:09:57 Two uncertainties: epistemic and ontological
00:11:43 Thriving with uncertainty: lasers, GPS, blood pressure
00:13:58 The brain: complex, not unknowable
00:16:57 Should scientists read more poetry?
00:17:33 Isaiah Berlin and value pluralism
00:20:00 Hedgehogs and foxes
00:21:54 Where the argument stops: contra Derrida
00:22:45 “It could be otherwise”: a very young sentence
00:24:45 Einstein or Darwin?
00:25:47 Complexity from randomness: the seven-minute asteroid
00:29:10 AI: the bomb and the anesthesia
00:30:36 Socrates against writing; calculators against math
00:32:52 Education: when you can’t smell Claude anymore
00:34:16 The Ignorance class and the 999-word essay
00:36:04 When AI learns to be uncertain
00:39:52 Revision is a victory: Maddox’s “all of them”
00:41:26 Living to 500? Die healthy instead
00:43:03 Thanks and goodbye