Someone has inserted a bookmark entitled "Replacement."
No such chapter exists.
Blottisham: This next section is rather unfair.
Quillibrace: To whom?
Blottisham: Everyone.
The author claims each generation replaces one certainty with another while believing it has finally escaped certainty altogether.
That seems unnecessarily sweeping.
Quillibrace: Does it?
Blottisham: We don't merely replace ideas.
Sometimes we genuinely improve them.
Quillibrace: Certainly.
The question is whether improvement eliminates the need for certainty...
or merely relocates it.
(A pause.)
Stray: I think that's the manuscript's central observation.
It never says new ideas are equivalent to old ones.
It says certainty itself appears surprisingly adaptable.
Blottisham: Adaptable?
Stray: It keeps finding new places to live.
Quillibrace: A rather elegant metaphor.
Yesterday's certainty occupies today's museum.
Today's certainty is already furnishing tomorrow's exhibition.
Blottisham: That's rather bleak.
Quillibrace: On the contrary.
Museums are generally signs of affection.
(They smile.)
Blottisham: But surely we do know more than previous generations.
Quillibrace: Almost certainly.
The manuscript is asking a subtler question.
Does knowing more reduce the human desire for certainty?
Blottisham: Doesn't it?
Quillibrace: History offers surprisingly little encouragement.
Stray: Perhaps knowledge expands...
and certainty simply moves to the new frontier.
Quillibrace: Yes.
The horizon retreats with admirable consistency.
(A thoughtful silence.)
Blottisham: There's a sentence here I rather like.
"Every generation recognises the previous generation's certainty more easily than its own."
That seems rather unfair.
Quillibrace: Entirely.
Which is why it may be true.
Blottisham: Surely we're capable of recognising our own assumptions.
Quillibrace: Occasionally.
Usually after retirement.
(A pause.)
Stray: Or after reading history.
History has an unfortunate habit of making previous certainties appear inevitable.
Quillibrace: Yes.
Every century finds the last one surprisingly confident.
The interesting question is what the next century will find surprising about ours.
Blottisham: That depends what survives.
Quillibrace: Precisely.
Posterity edits with extraordinary confidence.
Stray: I wonder whether certainty is less like a destination...
and more like accommodation.
Blottisham: Accommodation?
Stray: We inhabit it for a while.
It becomes comfortable.
Eventually it no longer fits.
So we move.
Quillibrace: Beautifully put.
Though, like most house moves, we spend several years insisting the new place is completely different...
while arranging the furniture in almost exactly the same way.
(Blottisham laughs.)
Blottisham: That's excellent.
Quillibrace: I was rather pleased with it myself.
(They return to the manuscript.)
Blottisham: Here's another curious remark.
"Revolutions often inherit the organisational habits of the institutions they replace."
Quillibrace: Of course.
One cannot organise a revolution without becoming organised.
Stray: Which means certainty doesn't merely survive revolutions.
It learns new vocabulary.
Quillibrace: Indeed.
Human beings are remarkably inventive.
Especially when renaming familiar arrangements.
Blottisham: Then are we simply condemned to repeat ourselves?
Quillibrace: No.
We repeat ourselves differently.
That is civilisation.
(A long silence.)
Stray: I don't think the manuscript is criticising certainty.
It's describing its migration.
Quillibrace: Exactly.
People imagine certainty to be a monument.
The manuscript suggests it is a tenant.
Blottisham: A tenant?
Quillibrace: Forever moving into newly renovated intellectual property.
(Silence.)
Blottisham: I shall never think about paradigm shifts in quite the same way again.
Quillibrace: That is the occupational hazard of good anthropology.
It rearranges perfectly ordinary phenomena until they become impossible to overlook.
The discussion concluded after an inconclusive attempt to determine whether the College had modernised over the previous century or merely acquired more efficient ways of preserving its traditions.
The minutes from 1928 were consulted.
They proved unexpectedly contemporary.
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