Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

But the way out of this philosophical and pedagogical
dilemma is neither to refuse to choose between Uncertainty and
Certainty nor to “sort of” choose the both of them. Either would
ignore the tension simmering between those contraries, avoiding
the problem that that opposition poses rather than facing it.
However, according to some theorists and researchers, such as
John Dewey, William Perry, and Peter Elbow, the conflict between
Certainty and Uncertainty can be used to further and deepen the
thinking, the teaching, and the writing over which both hold
sway and, consequently, both are necessary and both are crucial.
Both must be worshipped, as it were, in order for their
influence to be fully realized and, thus, for that influence to
have full impact. But they must be worshipped in a way that
there is an unending fluidity between them, the one yielding to
the other when it is time. The relationship between Uncertainty
and Certainty has to be an always changing thing and, because of
this, this relationship has to take the form of a dialectic: a
continual state of liminaltiy where the calls of these two
extremes of perceiving reality and “truth” are indulged at
different times of the composing as well as the teaching
process. The ultimate purpose of this, as well as its ultimate
promise, is that, through this dialectic of Certainty and
Uncertainty, reality and “truth” will also come to exist - to be
perceived and conceived through teaching and writing and
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