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Social Studies skills: Difference between revisions
→Certainty v. Uncertainty
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* humans dislike change | * humans dislike change | ||
* humans fear the unknown | * humans fear the unknown | ||
* humans yearn for predictability | * humans yearn for predictability | ||
* see '''Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan"''' for analysis of human fear of uncertainty | |||
Click EXPAND for excerpt from ''Leviathan'' on uncertainty: | |||
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> | |||
<pre> | |||
Only the present has an existence in nature; things past exist in the memory only; and future things don’t exist at all, because the future is just a fiction of the mind, arrived at by noting the consequences that have ensued from past actions and assuming that ·similar· present actions will have ·similar· consequences (an assumption that pushes us forward into the supposed future). This ·kind of extrapolation· is done the most securely by the person who has the most experience, but ·even then· not with complete security. And though it is called ‘prudence’ when the outcome is as we expected, it is in its own nature a mere presumption.</pre> | |||
from ''Leviathan'', Chapter 3, "Train of Imaginations" | |||
and | |||
<pre>Anxiety regarding •the future inclines men to investigate the causes of things; because knowledge of causes enables men to make a better job of managing •the present to their best advantage. Curiosity, or love of the knowledge of causes, draws a man from consideration of the effect to seek the cause, and then for the cause of that cause, ·and so on backwards· until finally he is forced to have the thought that there is some cause that had no previous cause, but is eternal; this being what men call ‘God’.</pre> | |||
from ''Leviathan'', Chapter 11, "The Difference of Manners" | |||
</div> | |||
=== Ritual === | === Ritual === | ||