{"id":323,"date":"2016-04-06T13:39:59","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T13:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=323"},"modified":"2024-02-20T16:14:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T16:14:33","slug":"a-modicum-of-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/a-modicum-of-doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"A Modicum Of Doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many say it is of vital importance to hold true to your beliefs. Belief is a concept that is central to “being human”. I would like to suggest that it is more important to have doubts. That Doubt is not so much central to “being” as to “becoming”.<\/p>\n

Without Doubt – without Uncertainty – there is no reason to learn – no reason to improve – no reason to seek knowledge. Absolute absence of doubt means that you “know it all” – only the absence of that certainty will trigger a search for a better understanding.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, most people have doubts. Unfortunately, doubt is often treated as a negative characteristic. This leads to Doubt getting a bit of a bad press. So – most people are harbouring doubts and thinking that is a bad thing. Now it is certainly true that some doubts are unhelpful – but possibly less so than some “certainties”. There is – I would suggest – very little about which we can really be 100% certain – we can get close – but ONLY about what we have experienced – not about what we will (or might) experience.<\/p>\n

When we start looking at the past we come up against the difficulty of separating reality from fantasy –\u00a0as I have written about before<\/a>. The further in the past something is, the less we can be certain about it. I can be reasonably certain that once I write this I will publish it in my blog – but even there a small doubt can creep in – it is certainly not 100% certain!!!<\/p>\n

So – Doubt as a necessary condition for self development – seems like the start of a new series of articles on here (but I can’t be sure…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many say it is of vital importance to hold true to your beliefs. Belief is a concept that is central to “being human”. I would like to suggest that it is more important to have doubts. That Doubt is not so much central to “being” as to “becoming”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[79,80,81,95,96,103,119],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-cognition","tag-complexity","tag-decision-making","tag-knowledge-management","tag-learning","tag-philosophical","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}