In today’s episode, two professors discuss this question: Why is it so hard to admit when we don’t know something? And why does it matter in the academic environment?
You’ll hear from Cullen Buie, professor of biological engineering at MIT, and Marcelo Gleiser, professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth. In this conversation, moderated by Hannah Eagleson (Emerging Scholars Network, InterVarsity), they discuss the importance of intellectual humility, how they see its impact in their lives, and why their religious worldviews encourage it.
This virtual forum was a Faculty Roundtable event hosted at MIT in August 2020. Thank you to the forums team for making this event possible. A link to the full conversation is in the episode description.
One thing needed for intellectual humility is the ability to decouple an idea or concept from you as a person.
I believe in God, and I'm made in the image of God. And that means two things. One, it means I have something to offer the world, and so I can have confidence. But, two, I'm also made in the image of God. I am not God, so I'm not all-knowing, I'm not all-powerful, I'm not omnipotent, I don't know everything.
The history of science is the history of failure. Every scientific revolution, every big discovery that we have made, and every changing worldview has happened because we were able to overcome an older worldview that was not correct or incomplete.
Intellectual humility is the cultivated ability to embrace the fact that we know much less than we think we do.
The only way you can be open to learning more is to start from the premise that you do not know enough. And to do that you have to be intellectually humble.
