"Uncertainty can be uncomfortable..."

In my last post ("On the nature of expertise..."), I mentioned the English poet John Keats, who lived around the turn of the 19th century.  Keats was a Romantic era poet whose peers included Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley (whose second wife was Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and The Last Man, two classics of literature and early examples of science fiction).  Keats was educated and trained as a physician and scientist.  It was only after his medical training that he became one of the greatest poets of his age.  Sadly, Keats died of tuberculosis at a very early age (25 years).

As I mentioned in the last post, Keats mentioned something he called "Negative Capability" in a letter to his brothers dated December 21, 1817 about an ongoing disagreement he had with his colleague, Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

...at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement...I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

It was to be the only time that he ever used the term, which is unfortunate.  Perhaps his early death at age 25 was the reason, though we can never know for certain.  In his letter, he referred to the capacity of the greatest writes (particularly William Shakespeare) to look to the beauty and the art of something, even if it led to confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, and discomfort.  As he wrote in his famous "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Beauty is truth and truth beauty – That is all/ ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."  

The origin of the term is also not known.  Some have suggested that Keats came up with the term on his own, based upon his prior scientific knowledge.  Perhaps he used the concept of electrical current with both a positive and negative pole.  The negative pole receives the electrical current from the positive pole - in other words, the negative pole is passive and receptive.  By translation, the "Man of Achievement" (a term which he used to describe an expert) receives information from a world that is full of mystery and doubt.  As such, an expert has to be comfortable with uncertainty and doubt.  An expert can never hope to know all of the answers.  

As Richard Gunderman writes for The Conversation, "Negative here is not pejorative. Instead, it implies the ability to resist explaining away what we do not understand.  Rather than coming to an immediate conclusion about an event, idea or person, Keats advises resting in doubt and continuing to pay attention and probe in order to understand it more completely."

He continues, "Keats reminds us that we are most likely to gain new insights if we can stop assuming that we know everything we need to know about people by neatly shoehorning them into preconceived boxes."  I am reminded again of the Greek philosopher Socrates, who in Plato's Apology argues that the individuals who are least likely to learn anything new are usually the ones who think that they already know all there is to know.  Wisdom, according to Socrates, involves questioning our own assumptions and admitting to ourselves that we don't know it all (see my previous posts, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing...", "Ancora Imparo!", and "Experts").

Gunderman concludes by stating, "Uncertainty can be uncomfortable. It is often quite tempting to stop pondering complex questions and jump to conclusions.  But Keats counsels otherwise."