Uncertainty Doesn't Go Away

In the middle of the current Coronavirus panic Martin van Creveld, the strategist, reviews the scene to remind us that things are not tied down.

He remarks on a new book about how we are soon going to transform ourselves from Homo Sapiens into Homo Deus, where we will be able "to look into the future and control our fate" much better than before.

But will we really? We thought we had it all tied down back in the Age of Reason with mechanical theories from the likes of "Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and others."

Many nineteenth century scientists in particular believed not just that the world is deterministic but that, such being the case, they would one day be able to predict whatever was about to take place in it.

This was considered to be a great improvement on the old days when the only way to get a handle on things was with divine help from gods and spirits and seers. Even after the revolution in physics with relativity and quantum theory scientists, even including Stephen Hawking, were still spinning the idea that "there only remained a few minor gaps to be closed."

But Creveld is having none of it. Responding to young students who wondered how they could ever learn what he knew, he drew a little square on the blackboard, and a slightly bigger one next to it. The little square was the students' knowledge. The slightly bigger one was his, Creveld's, knowledge. The blackboard was the scope of all available knowledge.

That is my understanding of the "meaning of life, the universe, and everything." We still don't know nothin'.

And it's remarkable. On the one hand we have evolved as animals that have wived and thrived on this earth to a remarkable extent. On the other, the whole of the world of life except us operates without our fabulous human reason. How does that work?

Used to be that we sneered at our forefathers for their ignorance and superstition. But what exactly should we do about the current Coronavirus scare? There are all kinds of possibilities, from Do Nothing and let the virus work its way through the population and pick everything up after it's all over, to Stop the World and quarantine everyone until the virus gives up. So, which one does our science recommend? And which one does our human social instinct, which, scientists say, is the key to our survival thus far?

You tell me.

In other words, we are just as hopeless at forecasting the future as we ever were. And no sooner do we figure that we have it all figured out than life comes along and reminds us that we don't have a clue.

You will notice that there are several strategies for life and survival. There is the small organism and thousands of eggs approach, favored by the insect world. There is the large organism and succor of the young approach that mammals and humans prefer. There is the non-social plan of solitary species like the orangutan and the incredibly social organization of termites. And every combination in between.

What does it all mean? And what if it doesn't mean anything?

The fact is that life and the world were a mystery when humans thought of the sun god riding his chariot through the heavens. And it is all still a mystery when we reckon the universe as unimaginably big, and we can't decide whether there is a universe or multiverses.

To use the current fashion of talking about "scale," it seems that the the world we live in is a mystery, at whatever scale you choose to experience it.

And what does that mean?