> [!Prompt] > To what extent do you agree that doubt is central to the pursuit of knowledge? Answer with reference to **two** areas of knowledge. ## 1. The Conventional View: Doubt as Central (Brief Introduction) Doubt is widely regarded as foundational in Western rationalist epistemology. Popper's falsification principle doubt as the engine that drives knowledge forward ## 2. Doubt Requires Foundations of Certainty (Doubt is central but) **Core argument**: Meaningful doubt is dependent on un-doubted foundations. ### Mathematics: Innovation through "daring not to doubt" **Euclidean geometry** mathematicians didn't doubt the truth of the Fifth Postulate rather, they **suspended the assumption of uniqueness** - "What if we *assume* this alternative could hold and see what happens?" --> constructive naïveté rather than critical skepticism innovation required *believing* in a possibility, not *doubting* the truth of it ### The undoubtable framework: Logic itself Logical principles function as the bedrock that cannot be doubted without rendering doubt itself meaningless Mathematics builds with certainty *within* logical frameworks Progress happens through deductive certainty, not perpetual questioning of foundations **Ultimate insight**: doubt is central but only within a specific paradigm, with *belief* in the paradigm itself ## 3. Alternative: Challenging Western Epistemological Universalism (Doubt is not central) danger = universalizing Englightenment rationalist-reductionist-mechanistic-cartesian framework as the only legitimate knowledge framework? Alternative knowledge-generation modes: context-based, participatory, pattern-based Example: [[Seeing Like a Language Model]] **Example: AlphaFold's protein structure prediction** Traditional approach (pre-2020): - Explicit rules about amino acid interactions - Hypothesis-driven: "We think proteins fold this way because..." - Doubt-centered: Test each proposed mechanism, refine theories AlphaFold's approach: - Absorbed patterns from 170,000+ known protein structures - No explicit rules about _why_ proteins fold - No hypothesis to doubt—just **recognition of deep correlations** in a web of relationships **Result**: Solved a 50-year grand challenge in 18 months ## 4. Synthesis Doubt is central but *only within certain epistemological frameworks*. Doubt is central to knowledge that operates through explicit propositions and hypothesis-testing, not but in domans that gain knowledge through pattern-recognition, tacit understanding, and participatory immersion. - Domains amenable to formalization (classical physics, formal logic) → doubt-driven refinement - Domains of irreducible complexity (protein folding, language, consciousness, markets, ecosystems) → pattern-trust and immersion **Doubt's centrality is paradigm-dependent, and AI reveals an alternative epistemology we've been blind to.** Paradigm shift -- from the rationalist-reductionist epistemology to emergent-relatinoal-context-based epistemology how our traditional science has hit its limits, and we must transfer. talk about complexity science and the biggest challenges of humanity