Adrift in a Sea of Certainty

A departing columnist with one of my local papers has assembled a good summary of the philosophy that guides this blog. Arch Montgomery, head of Asheville School in Asheville, NC, writes in his ultimate column that

...certainty is conviction absent humility. Certainty is intolerant. It is absolute. It knows the answers and will not tolerate disagreement. It is inflexible, permanent and anti-intellectual. It is the Taliban. It is the Ku Klux Klan.

Exactly. He also makes use of what I consider to be one of the wisest things ever said, paraphrased for an educational context: "We do not want our children to have minds so open that their brains fall out." I'll take this opportunity to refer to a little essay I wrote a while back for Skeptic magazine on the evolution of the original aphorism.