8. To what extent is certainty attainable?

Certainty is a concept that is often sought after in everyday life. The methods to obtain certainty however and the ways

in which it can be acquired often vary across people and disciplines.

Object 1. My Graphical Calculator

This object is the graphical calculator which I use during my HL maths lessons. Whenever I use it for calculations, I hope

and believe that it performs these accurately such that when I type one plus one it will always be two. This is based on

the assumption that no mechanical failure occurs but one plus one must always be two whether this is in the past or the

future since such a statement is true based on the fundamental axioms of mathematics. This may lead us to conclude

that such a calculation attains absolute certainty since the result can be proven from the axioms.

However, all the calculations that my calculator carries out fundamentally rely on the truth of the axioms on which

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all of mathematics is built. With Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, it has been proven that some fundamental statements

may still be true but have no proof. Based on how we previously established certainty through provability, it would seem

that if a statement cannot be proven, then the certainty of that statement and any deductions upon it are now also no

longer completely certain since we previously established that a statement is certain if it can be proven.

However, simultaneously, such a statement with no proof is still true, and so any further deductions from it must also be

true and so certainty could simultaneously be fully attained and not be attained depending on how certainty is viewed

and defined. Therefore, even within mathematics (arguably, the most certain subject), the calculator demonstrates how

mathematics fundamentally still does manage to be uncertain in its own way depending on how one defines certainty as

being attained.

Object 2. BBC weather forecast for London1

This object is the BBC weather website which aims to predict the weather into the future. I have often used such a service

but have also experienced how it is sometimes inaccurate especially in long term predictions. This object is therefore

serves as an example of where certainty can change depending on time considered as the further the prediction goes into

the future, the lower the certainty.

Weather forecasts ultimately rely on previous data, but since data cannot fictionally be created, we must rely on the
1 Anon, 2021. London - BBC Weather. [online] BBC Weather.

a Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2643743> [Accessed 16 September 2021].

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assumption that future weather will follow patterns seen in the past. From a purely theoretical perspective, since chaos

is present in weather systems, the smallest difference from past events can ‘blow up’ and create completely new weather.

This would then suggest that there is zero certainty in any prediction about the future including the weather since no two

previous events can be perfectly identical.

However, in reality, it is far more useful to take a more pragmatic approach where we assume that certain events are

more likely based on the occurrence of similar events in the past. Naturally, this means that our certainty has been

increased but it demonstrates how this object shows how certainty can seemingly only be attained through some assump-

tions or simplifications. However, this will likely be necessary with the complexity of the natural world as in a model with

infinitely many variables, the future could be perfectly predicted but of course, such a model is physically impossible.

Object 3. Scientific paper about COVID-19 immunity2

2 Gaebler, C. et al., 2021. Evolution of antibody immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Nature, 591(7851), pp.639-644.

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This object is a scientific paper published in the famous research journal Nature about antibody immunity to COVID-19.

It received widespread attention from the media which directly used the results presented but it raises the question of how

and to what extent we can be certain of results published in research papers like the above.

This object is interesting in the context of this exhibition as it presents many different aspects through which certainty

can be attained in the scientific setting or context. The paper in itself presents its findings with a range of certainty

and various measures of confidence levels in the results. This helps serve as a numerical basis for certainty as with lower

uncertainty in results and high confidence, certainty has been attained to a greater extent. However, even by collecting

more data and reducing uncertainty, it seems that reducing uncertainty to zero may fundamentally be impossible. This

is because there will always be some unaccounted variable or a lack of precision that means, whilst uncertainty can be

reduced to negligible levels, truly eliminating it may likely be impossible.

This object also presents methods of attaining certainty through other means irrespective of what the authors write.

The fact that this article was published in a peer-reviewed and widely respected journal, Nature, means that the authority

of the journal itself and the publishing methods employed may also assist in increasing the certainty towards the findings

of the paper. Obviously, just because something is peer-reviewed or published in a respected journal does not mean we

can be certain of its validity as sometimes mistakes will be missed or even very difficult to detect in the case of certain

biases that may affect the authors. Additionally, this type of certainty may be of a more subjective kind as peer-review

or following the scientific method cannot quantifiably reduce numerical error and uncertainty.

In conclusion, these three objects have demonstrated how certainty and uncertainty is a concept that permeates through-

out real life. Fundamentally, whilst we can try and successfully increase our level of certainty in a given situation, there

appears to be a fundamental limit, due to the limitations of mankind and the complexity of nature itself.

Bibliography

Anon, 2021. London - BBC Weather. [online] BBC Weather.

Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2643743> [Accessed 16 September 2021].

Gaebler, C. et al., 2021. Evolution of antibody immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Nature, 591(7851), pp.639-644.