There’s a line I read somewhere or other; it went something like this:
You can’t see anything if you see through everything.
I was reminded of it when I ran across this piece, which argues that an excessive emphasis on the avoidance of error can inhibit understanding:
We can worry about getting on the wrong train in the foreign train station whose signs we can’t read. But we should also worry about dithering in the station too long and thus failing to get on the right train. We could starve to death in that station if we never leave. This, it seems to me, is the essence of Newman and Pascal’s insight. Sometimes, the dangers of failing to affirm the truth are far greater than the dangers of wrongly affirming falsehood.
If we see this danger — the danger of truths lost, insights missed, convictions never formed — then the complexion of intellectual inquiry changes, and the burdens of proof shift. We begin to cherish books and teachers and friends who push us and romance us with the possibilities of truth.
As someone who holds that “it’s not what you don’t know that gets you, it’s what you do know that just ain’t so” I think this idea could easily be — and often is — taken too far. It still seems a noteworthy point of view.
