As established in my very first post, the point of this blog is to teach my kids how they can know things with certainty. I’ve defined proof, argued about arguments, failed to convince about the meaning of convince, and wasted four months avoiding discussions of qualified and judges.
The problem with speaking about certainty is that very few things are actually “certain” if you really dig down and think about those things.
Consider your weight* as you step on a digital scale. That scale probably returns this rock-solid number, perhaps even to the tenth of a pound. Now that’s certainty!
*This is only for the guys here. Talk about a woman’s weight at your own (eternal) peril.
OK, Chubbs, step off of it and then back on. There’s a pretty good chance that the number has changed somewhat–especially if it is a more “accurate” scale that measures into the fractions of pounds.
Did your weight change? I suppose that if the number changed you could–and probably did–chalk it up to having shifted your feet slightly. And you’d probably be right.
Of course, you could force the scale to change by chugging a quart of water, adding two pounds right there. Or you could have–while your were in the bathroom–uh…”availed yourself of the facilities” and lost a pound or two.
In a sense your weight just did change. After all, the scale doesn’t know the difference between what has been absorbed into your body versus that which is sloshing around in your digestive system.*
*I suppose you could take off your shirt and shoes and change that number as well, but I think we can all agree that we should restrict the phrase “my weight” to only be the body itself.
In fact, boxers and wrestlers take advantage of this very fact by starving and sweating themselves–sometimes to the point of genuine physical harm–in order to “make weight” and qualify for a particular weight class. There is often a bit of a party atmosphere after the official weight-in as the participants then pack back on all of that temporarily dropped weight in preparation for the next days’ matches.
But I dare suggest that your weight actually did change. During the few brief moments of stepping on, stepping off, and then stepping on again, your body kept maintaining its various functions: heart beating, lungs breathing,* etc.
*And if the numbers on your scale looked anything like mine, that “lungs breathing” was an audible gasp.
At the very least, your body took in some atmospheric air and exchanged a portion of the oxygen in that air for the carbon dioxide in your body. Of course, the resulting change in weight is usually so slight that only the most sensitive of equipment (measuring to the thousandths of a milligram*) can detect that change.
*Or “millionths of a horse-drawn hamburger” for my fellow American readers.
But even if it requires that sort of equipment to detect, the point remains that your weight DID change.
Now you might say, “But that teeny tiny amount doesn’t really matter.” Of course, it doesn’t matter. But that wasn’t the original question. The original question was, “Did your weight change?”
But enough about weight. How about a different example? What about your age?*
*Between questions on weight and age, it’s remarkable that I ever got married. Between questions on weight and age, my wife also finds it remarkable that I ever got married.
Well, that number certainly seems to stay constant for a while–a year, in fact.
Suppose you answer, “I’m 75.”*
*I’m under no illusions that people under retirement age bother to read my posts.**
**Come to think of it, I’m under no illusions that people at or beyond retirement age bother to read my posts, either.***
***Except for my mom. Thanks, mom!
But are your really “75”? Or are you “75 years, 108 days” and tomorrow you’ll be “75 years, 109 days”? Or are you “75 years, 108 days, 5 hours, 44 minutes, and 19 seconds” and very soon will be “75 years, 108 days, 5 hours, 44 minutes, and 20 seconds”?
There’s a good chance that even for fast readers, that that last sentence took a few seconds to read and process and that the “20 seconds” part was already outdated by the time you got to it.
Even better, consider this: You are older now than when you first began this sentence.*
Of course, there are some things that do NOT change. But I’m afraid you’ll find those to be a lot more rare than you might suppose.
You might offer up definitions as things that do not change. Well, for one, a lot of definitions have changed. For example, when the Fairy Godmother wished Disney’s Cinderella to “Be happy! Be gay!” I suppose that such a remark might be taken a bit differently today than it was back in 1950.
But let me give you the benefit of the doubt and offer up an example of a definition that isn’t nearly so malleable. How about dozen?
We all know that dozen means “12 items.” Now that’s a constant! That doesn’t change!
Agreed! But it’s also completely pointless. Definitions–or more precisely, the term associated with some definition–is nothing more than a mental shortcut.
In the above example, using the phrase “12 items” is clearly cumbersome in everyday language, especially because so many objects are sold in packages of “12 items.”*
*Of course, someone could make the argument that “so many objects are sold in packages of ’12 items'” precisely because the word dozen is so familiar.
And because saying “12 items” all the time is so cumbersome, we’ve created the word dozen merely as a shortcut to the concept of “12 items.”
In the Cinderella example, the Fairy Godmother’s use of the word gay offers up a flavor of happiness that was not conveyed through using the word happy a moment before.
We think of happy as being…well…”happy.” But gay meant “to make an obvious, external show of that happiness.” And I think we can all agree that “Be happy! Be gay!” is much more rhythmical than “Be happy! Make an obvious, external show of that happiness!”
In fact, the brief “Be happy! Be gay!” is actually clearer to interpret than the longer statement–at least, it is clearer to those who have already internalized the term and its meaning.
That illustrates part of the struggle with learning a new language. One of my colleagues grew up in France and–in addition to his regular work teaching biology–also teaches French.
He remarked to me the difficulty he had learning English. He initially “knew” the words, but needed to convert each of them from English into French in order to make sense of those words. For example, he needed to convert the English word book into the French word livre before he could decipher that book means “a bound collection of papers.” Of course, he’d already interpreted livre to mean “a bound collection of papers,”* so he just needed to get from book to livre and the process was done.
*Or, more precisely, “une collection d’articles reliés.”
But the thing that really struck me was when he said, “I remember when I first started to think in English.”
All of my inner dialogue is in English because I automatically convert English words into their broader meanings. Similarly, my colleague used to think in French for a similar reason. But after months and years of living in the United States–being saturated with English–he eventually began to make the immediate jump from the English words to their fundamental meanings.*
*As an interesting aside, he also noted that, when he goes back to France, the reverse happens. After about a week or two, he begins to think in French again. Returning to the States then requires a week or two to transition back to English.
To sum up this overly long discussion of definitions, they don’t (typically) change because they are by definition* merely shortcuts for longer, more cumbersome concepts.**
*Yes, I know: the definition of a definition. And down the rabbit hole we go!
**Which is why we say “Pull up a chair!” instead of “Pull up an object designed solely to be sat upon!”
Now, the perceptive reader* might have noticed that the definition I chose as absolutely unchanging–a dozen–is related to mathematics. And if there’s one thing that’s unchanging, it’s the truths of mathematics.
*Again…Hi, mom!
Right? Right?!?
Quiet Contempt 