The Uncertainty of Knowledge

“There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.” (W. Somerset Maugham).

To me this is very powerful statement that stretches across all of the areas of philosophy. For this response I am going to focus on epistemology. What W. Somerset Maugham is saying is that there are things that we may believe to be true, but then we find out that what we believed may not be true. To me this is very powerful. First and foremost in faith it is hard to be certain what is true and what is not true, but isn’t that the meaning of faith: believing without knowing. I find this statement also very interesting because I am a science teacher. The process of science is to study, experiment, and draw conclusions about a problem to find an answer. If you look back in history, science has had to modify and change their beliefs about something with the new knowledge being discovered. For example, people were “certain” that the world was flat due to their observations, only to later find out that that certainty was incorrect. One topic I am struggling with in regards to my faith and my science teachings is dinosaurs. Where did they come from? How did they get here? How does this relate to the bible? These questions have been posed to many people without a clear and “certain” answer. I would be interested in anyone else’s take on this issue.