As it has been said, it is best to begin at the beginning, proceed through the middle and stop at the end. So where did my own skepticism begin, how has it been nurtured and where to I stand today? Let me explain.
I was raised by a woman who just happened to be my mother. It didn't have to be that way. Tarzan after all was not. But I digress and a digression this soon in a post is not a good sign. Let me start again, and more skeptically. I was raised by a woman who I do believe to be my mother. She was a non practicing christian. I would like to think she was non practicing because she perfected her christianity when she was a girl, but since she is currently a supporter of the death penalty, a rather uncharitable point of view, I don't think that is the case. My mother however was intelligent and humorous and a above all irreverent. It is in that irreverence that I believe my skepticism was born.
In the historical mystery by Umberto Eco titled 'The name of the rose' the plot centers around a killer monk that fears the subversive power of laughter. In my case I do believe that my ability to laugh at the truly ridiculous despite societies expectation that I worship it saved me from a life filled with superstition. While my propensity for critical thinking is important and I'm sure that came from my mother as well, my sense of humor is what allows me to truly enjoy the strange and wonderful world of adult make believe, without becoming enthralled by it. All the worlds a stage, and much of it shows stand up and slapstick comedy.And so I was trained at an early age to be amused by improbable things; In other words, to give religion it's due. But while humor protected me from the need to fool myself it did not answer any questions. All the questions a child generally has, I had. Luckily I had a mother that didn't mind saying 'I don't know.' And she knew where the library was. I was raised in an environment that encouraged both inquiry and the acquisition of knowledge. At 5 I knew many more specifics about individual dinosaurs than I do now, and rather than thinking me a geek or an egghead my mother was proud. I was rewarded for knowing things.
So, with a love of humor, the absurd and knowledge I was armed and ready. That was how I became a skeptic. I was raised to be one. But what sustained me? In the beginning there was no great effort involved in maintaining my skepticism. The framework of knowledge I had started to build as a child was enough, although I would be a sad sad little man if my understanding hadn't been refined over time. 'When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.' It is fun to quote religious writings especially when one can redirect their original meaning, but I have a serious point.
When I was young, I thought science was RIGHT; Yes, right in capitals. I thought it was a replacement for religion. It was Hamlet, the wronged hero come to vanquish the wicked usurper from the stage with a a blade as keen as Occam's. It had all the answers. That it was right seemed obvious; self evident. Science produced results. That was the bottom line. At that time I thought science gave final answers. I thought the universe didn't play dice; that an object could only be in one place at a time. I thought nothing moved faster than light. Obviously there comes a time when you learn that none of these things are completely true. Eventually faithful science balks and rears. The steed becomes the sphinx, but instead of devouring one for incorrect answers it simply continues to riddle. The universe transforms itself from a place that can ultimately be understood, to one that offers mysteries that are seemingly impossible to intuit.
Feynman said:'I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.'
Even if he was wrong, there seem to be precious few of us to give him the lie. In short, the universe is weird, fundamentally, irreconcilably weird. We can calculate it, but we aren't evolutionarily wired to get the behavior of it's current basic building blocks on a gut level. I see no evidence that convinces me that the universe isn't 'Turtles, all the way down.' Hell, universes themselves might evolve. We have to face our limitations.
There I was. Not only was the world around me made up of objects that were mostly empty space and ghostly forces, but on a fundamental level the universe only offered approximations and probabilities. On top of that I learned that I had been betrayed by words themselves. I found that I had to come to detente with the parts of post modernism that made sense to me. Scientific communication takes place using words and language. Words and language offer their own traps and inadequacies and not only for the unwary, but for everyone. Communication has a cultural context that takes part in both defining and interpreting scientific concepts. To top off all this, I found out that there is no such thing as the scientific method. There is no one set of rules to go by that can be defined as the scientific cannon for all disciplines. So what did I do?
For years, I did nothing or at least I didn't do what was required. But eventually I faced my fear. I dug into philosophy in an attempt to understand what had lead up to this mess. I felt that all of human history was involved in conspiring to make my head a maze and muddle. Because I'm a slow reader I would have found it too challenging to read every philosopher in depth, so instead I read books about philosophy in general. I read surveys of philosophy. I wanted a general outline of the evolution of critical thought. Where had we come from and where are we going? In the end I was led to a question. THE fundamental question: How do we know? Then it all made sense. Science for me is about that question and that question alone. Science is in effect the answer to that question. It isn't the answer to 'What do we know.' It is the answer to How.
So my focus changed and individual elements of knowledge faded in significance while the over all framework that I use to evaluate those facts became primary. It isn't an answer that will ever be complete or perfect, but it is an answer that I'm happy with. Now I know that if I work on my How, my What will best representation I'm likely to get of the IS. The best we can do will have to be good enough. Because good enough is the best we can do.