David Peat

216 From Certainty to Uncertaintylives. We ask, “What do we truly want for our world, and for the worldof our children’s children?” It is a question none of us can avoid.Shortly after September 11, I made a trip to Spain and ended up inthe town of Cordoba. Nine hundred years ago it was the most importantcity in the European world, far more significant than London orParis. As the cultural center of Andalusia, it was the crown of Arabicculture, rivaling even Baghdad. It was while wandering through thestreets of Cordoba that I learned of the great vision of harmony andlearning that had once flourished in that part of the world, and stillremains a dream for all of us.Cordoba had its great Mosque, and philosophers of the caliber ofAverroes and Ibn al-Arabi. It was the birthplace of the Jewish physician,scholar, and philosopher Moses Maimonides. Above all, Cordobawas a city devoted to learning and when power passed from the Arabsto the Catholic King Alfonso X, he continued their dream by creatinga university where Jews, Christians, and Muslims could study side byside the arts of mathematics, astronomy, botany, philosophy, andmedicine. Even their sacred books were translated into each other’slanguages.Cordoba holds a lesson for us. It tells us that when people areunited by a common respect for learning, by a love of the beauty andwonder of the world, and by a respect for the sacred spaces of others,then true brotherhood and sisterhood is possible. The deepest humanvalues can transcend those divisions created by history and economicsand reinforced by hatred and empty rhetoric.I continue to believe in the future and, as I have argued in thisbook, I feel that we have been given an important chance. The crutchesof certainty have been cast away as illusions. Together we, of whateverbelief, history, or culture, must work together to create a common future—a future that respects the rights and aspirations of all people,values the spirit of learning, celebrates the values of beauty and truth,and cares for our planet’s health.