Another thought or two about Two Things - or do I mean a thing or two about Two Thoughts? No. Thoughts -->Things, not Things --->Thoughts. This time. What the order may be on another occasion, I won't venture to say.

The thing is, I mean the thought is, I particularly liked number two under Teaching History -"2. They think it's about answers, but it's really about questions."

Applies to so many subjects and forms of inquiry, doesn't it. Applies to a large range of things. Let me put it this way: what kind of person is more interesting, what kind would you prefer to be trapped in an elevator with - one who has answers or one who has questions?

I suppose that's putting it a little too broadly. One wouldn't really want to be trapped in an elevator with someone who had nothing but questions. I suppose I'm speaking mataphorically, using question and answer as stand-ins for uncertainty and certainty.

At any rate, the issue is the same in science - which is not surprising, since as Susan Haack among others points out, various methods of inquiry have a lot in common. At any rate, 'they' think science is about certainty, but it's really, as any scientist will tell you, about uncertainty.

Edward Rothstein wrote a really goofy article for the NY Times in January in which he got it exactly backwards. He was commenting on the annual question at Edge, and the fact that so many of the scientists talked about uncertainty in their answers.

But curiously, an aura of modesty, tentativeness and skepticism hovers over the submissions - this from a group not renowned for self-abnegation. This may, perhaps, be an admission that fundamental insights are not now to be had. But it may also be an uncertainty about science itself.

No, of course it's not, it's just knowing how science is done. If Times reporters don't know that, I suppose it's safe to assume that most people don't, which is slightly dispiriting. It seems so basic...