Certainty can be defined as either:
- perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or
- the mental state of being without doubt
Objectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no skepticism can occur. Philosophy (at least historical Cartesian philosophy) seeks this state.
It is widely held that certainty about the real world is a failed historical enterprise (that is, beyond deductive truths, tautology, etc.). This is in large part due to the power of David Hume's problem of induction. Physicist Carlo Rovelli adds that certainty, in real life, is useless or often damaging (the idea is that "total security from error" is impossible in practice, and a complete "lack of doubt" is undesirable).
Read more about Certainty: Degrees of Certainty, Foundational Crisis of Mathematics, Quotes
Famous quotes containing the word certainty:
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The only certainty is that nothing is certain.”
—Pliny The Elder (c. 23–79)
“Psychologists have set about describing the true nature of women with a certainty and a sense of their own infallibility rarely found in the secular world.”
—Naomi Weisstein, U.S. psychologist, feminist, and author. Psychology Constructs the Female (1969)