the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

namely Weigel’s decision to sign the Formula Concordiae despite his many reservations.
Weigel’s decision-making process and ultimately the decision to keep quiet grows out of
his reading practice—and so it is to this question of reading and decision making that I
now turn.
Of the thousands of decisions a person must make each day, most normally
involve a relatively limited set of options to choose from (writing this dissertation vs.
going to the movies; eating chips vs. going for a run), and are geared toward simple goals
(professional success; healthy living). In such cases, decision-making is governed by
single factors (cost, pleasure, effort) and the evidence needed to decide between the
options is easy to assess. Other decisions are more difficult: inscrutable evidence and
uncertain outcomes get in the way of clear choices that would leave the conscience
unburdened. Making decisions in a complex system proves difficult because complex
systems produce unintended consequences, there might not exist a single good or bad
outcome, and it is often necessary to make trade-offs between priorities. Observing
decisions at the level of individual agency and choice is perhaps not a useful way of
analyzing what have been termed “messy” or “wicked” problems. Wicked problems are
“unbounded in scope, time and resources,” such that it is difficult even to describe the
problem, and therefore even more difficult to gather and evaluate evidence that would
guide problem solving or decision making. No doubt any individual decision has an
impact on the system as a whole, but it is impossible to say just what that impact might
be, since the effect is distorted and filtered through all the other agents operating within
the system. One writer has compared simple and complex systems to the difference
between throwing a rock and throwing a live bird. Both rock and bird are subject to the
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