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AFTER CERTAINTY

Book

Learning to See

Why Humanity Keeps Rediscovering Practices of Wisdom

A comparative inquiry into how scientific, philosophical, psychological, and spiritual traditions develop practices that help people notice more honestly and live with uncertainty—without claiming those traditions are secretly the same.

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Major concepts

Concept

Adaptation

Adaptation marks moral life responding to conditions that will not wait—scarcity, violence, scale, displacement. In Before Certainty Arrives, what begins as adaptation can outlive the pressures that first made it necessary. It helps preserve workable coordination under constraint, but can fail when adaptive tools are mistaken for permanent moral truth. It differs from inheritance because adaptation names responsive change; inheritance names what gets carried forward after conditions shift. It differs from drift because adaptation is active response; drift is gradual decoupling while machinery still runs.

Concept

Interpretation

Interpretation names the ongoing work of deciding what something means enough to coordinate on. It becomes important whenever shared action depends on more than immediate perception—across time, distance, conflict, or institutional scale. It helps preserve continuity between experience and obligation, but can fail when interpretation hardens into category and stops tracking changing conditions. In the authority arc, sacred authority compresses interpretation while writing and law later externalize it so disputes can be settled without shared presence. It differs from private understanding because interpretation must be able to coordinate judgment or contest authority in shared space; it differs from meaning because interpretation is the active reconstruction, not only what gets stabilized.

Major thinkers

Person

Alasdair MacIntyre

Moral philosopher of virtue ethics, tradition-constituted practice, and critique of emotivist modern morality.

Person

Dan M Kahan

Legal scholar studying cultural cognition—how group identity shapes risk perception and belief formation.

Person

Daniel Kahneman

Psychologist of judgment and decision-making—biases, heuristics, and noise in expert choice.

Person

Irving L Janis

Psychologist of groupthink—how cohesive groups suppress dissent and convince themselves their consensus is rational.

Person

J David Pulsipher

Scholar of peace studies and Mormon theology; coauthor of Proclaim Peace.

Person

Jan Shipps

Historian of Mormonism as new religious tradition emerging in American society.

Person

Karl R Popper

Philosopher of falsification, open society, and critique of historicist certainty.

Person

Leonard J Arrington

Historian of Mormon economic and frontier settlement history; author of Great Basin Kingdom.

Person

Patrick Q Mason

Historian of Mormonism and peace studies; coauthor of Proclaim Peace on conflict and contention in Latter-day Saint culture.

Person

Philip E Tetlock

Researchers on integrative complexity and how leaders structure thinking under conflict and uncertainty.

Person

Richard Lyman Bushman

Historian of early Mormonism, Joseph Smith, and the cultural formation of Latter-day Saint community.

Person

Thomas F O'Dea

Sociologist of Mormonism; authority, cooperation, and sources of internal strain.

Person

Thomas S Kuhn

Historian and philosopher of scientific paradigms, normal science, and revolutionary shifts in what counts as evidence.

Research sources

book

Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900

Arrington, Leonard J. *Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.

book

Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

Bushman, Richard Lyman. *Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling*. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

book

Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes

Janis, Irving L. *Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes*. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.

article

Motivated Reasoning.

Kahan, Dan M. "Motivated Reasoning." *Behavioral and Brain Sciences* (2017).

book

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Kahneman, Daniel. *Thinking, Fast and Slow*. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

book

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Kuhn, Thomas S. *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*. 4th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

book

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

MacIntyre, Alasdair. *After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory*. 3rd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.

book

Proclaim Peace: The Restoration's Answer to an Age of Conflict

Mason, Patrick Q., and J. David Pulsipher. *Proclaim Peace: The Restoration's Answer to an Age of Conflict*. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2021.

book

The Mormons

O'Dea, Thomas F. *The Mormons*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.

book

The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Popper, Karl R. *The Logic of Scientific Discovery*. London: Hutchinson, 1959.

book

Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition

Shipps, Jan. *Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition*. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985.

book

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

Tetlock, Philip E. *Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?*. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.