Uncertainty creates anxiety. We feel we live in uncertain times — and so did almost every generation before us, probably all the way back to the Stone Age, where uncertainty lurked everywhere. In fact, we have far more control over our fates than any previous generation. And yet uncertainty still plagues us.  

But the most recent advances in science are producing good reasons to embrace uncertainty. We are learning that it is a fundamental characteristic of the universe, a place ruled mostly by randomness and probability. If that’s unsettling, consider the alternative: a universe that is governed by immutable laws and is simply ticking away like a perfectly running clock with everything occurring as it had been determined since the very first microsecond of its existence.

Randomness, and the uncertainty that accompanies it, is a powerful force. Learning to use it has resulted in new insights about complex systems from living creatures to black holes. Even more important, randomness and uncertainty are forces of optimism. Every instance of chance is an opportunity for science to overcome something that once plagued us.

How can this be the case?

Niels Bohr, one of the founding scientists of quantum mechanics, reportedly said that “the opposite of a fact is a falsehood. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Wrap your head around that one. Why settle for one answer when there may be several suitable ones, depending on what you are trying to accomplish?

This requires an attitude of uncertainty — a belief that “it could be otherwise.” Uncertainty allows us to entertain multiple possibilities instead of assuming we need to land on just one. It allows to us believe that we are not consigned to our current conditions. In other words, uncertainty makes us free.

This is a tremendous realization that scientists only began to internalize in recent generations. It has enabled advances in drug discovery, lasers, GPS and more, and opened up our understanding of cosmology, economics, and meteorology.

Certainty, it turns out, is not so desirable after all. If everything were certain, then where would the opportunity for adventure, creativity, imagination come from? Only scientists who embrace uncertainty can make big discoveries.

The belief that science is about answers — the answer, the solution — to every problem has led to exaggerated expectations that cannot be fulfilled.