Uncertainty: From Probability to Fiction and Religion - Hardcover

by Yair Neuman (Author)

In a scientifically oriented world, our understanding of uncertainty is almost exclusively mediated by probabilistic ideas, whether naïvely understood or theoretically grounded. However, there is one context where the scientific idea of probability is notable by its absence: our experience of uncertainty as individuals from a first-person perspective, from within. Here, fiction as "the science of the particular" may help by exposing the phenomenology of uncertainty. In this book, Prof. Neuman studies experiences of uncertainty as reflected and expressed in fiction. Although a common saying is that God does not play dice (with the universe), it will be shown that God's presence and absence both repeatedly accompany the experience of uncertainty. This book, critical and interdisciplinary, is imbued with irony and humor, and contains profound reflections that will give the reader a fresh perspective on the feelings we experience when facing the abyss of ignorance.

Author Biography

Yair Neuman, Ph.D. (1968), is a full Professor at the Department of the Arts, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He has published numerous papers in top-tier journals spanning the sciences, psychoanalysis, and semiotics. He is the author of 14 books, including Conceptual Mathematics and Literature (Brill, 2020).