Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

“Allegory of the Cave.” It took the form of the “God” of the
prophets and preachers of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition.
It took the form of the mathematical laws of the cosmos
postulated by René Descartes and, later, Sir Isaac Newton. As
Dewey explains it:
The belief that the divine encompasses the world was
detached from its mythical context and made the basis
of philosophy, and it became also the foundation of
physical science - as is suggested by the remark that
the heavenly bodies are gods. Telling the story of
the universe in the form of rational discourse
instead of emotionalized imagination signified the
discovery of logic as a rational science. Conformity
on the part of supreme reality to the requirements of
logic conferred upon its constitutive objects
necessary and immutable characteristics. Pure
contemplation of these forms was man's highest and
most divine bliss, a communion with unchangeable
truth. (15)
It is no exaggeration, then, when Dewey declares in his book
that “[t]he quest for certitude has determined our basic
metaphysics” (22).
Again: certainty. Whether in the purview of religion or
science or whatever other undertaking of human society,
certainty is sought out because it would seem to promise not
simply peace and control, or at the very least a reassuring
semblance of them, but also, very well more crucially, an
alignment with a “Truth” – “fixed and immutable,” “absolute and
unshakeable” – written across the universe. And a pursuit of
certainty necessitates a very particular perspective of the
world and humanity’s ultimate place and purpose therein. It is
a perspective of reality and “truth” that is extremely bipolar
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