Category: Provisionality

• February 4, 2015

  ‘The intensity of a conviction’: Doubt, certitude, and provisionality

  A few days ago, I came across this statement by the notable biologist Peter Medawar: ‘the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.’ What he says is true: we may have a strong, firm belief that P without its being true that P. But there may…