就大多数人们而言，他们真正需要的并非知识，而是要确信。获得真正的知识需要承担风险并且要有开放的心胸，但是对于大多数人而言，相比去研究经常是没有定论的事实，人们更喜欢被赋予信心。
Biblical story has it that the price for knowing is death. Although the story per se is not scientifically verified, the moral implied in it has largely been accepted that to acquire knowledge necessitates overwhelming consumption of time, energy, or effort. It is true that gaining real knowledge does require taking risks and keeping the mind open.
It is clear, for one thing, that human beings are born without knowledge. To gain any kind of knowledge, especially the expertise, one must keep her mind open. To keep mind open first means that one is ready to accept some fundamental concepts, or rudimentary knowledge of a certain discipline. Otherwise, no one can become an educated person, needless to mention the erudite. It is generally accepted that children are faster in learning than adults. This is because children do not have bias or preoccupation in their mind. Rather their mind is open to whatever new to them. A child at the age of seven is ready to learn mathematics or music if they are interested in these. Here being interested virtually means that their mind is open to these stuffs. By contrast, an octogenarian is blunt in learning any new knowledge more because the mind of the elderly people has been blocked by the memories and prejudice than because the elderly people lack the necessary physical vigor. In fact, as people grow or aging, the crevice between the intrinsic world of the mind and the extrinsic world shrinks in magnitude.
The second layer of the connotation of keeping mind open is that an individual human being who attempts to learn something must not be presumptuous, arrogant, or peremptory when confronted with different or even opposite theories, arguments, or ideas. Otherwise, it is impossible to gain the real knowledge because in the process of becoming “knowing”, it is inevitable to encounter various conflicts, controversies, or crashes. Unable to be dispassionate in shaping an insight into the different assertion, one is unable to shape the panorama. Refusing to open the mind, a person can only have prejudice, not the real knowledge.
Unfortunately, every human being is subject to a certain culture, religion, and the means of learning. As a result, no one is entirely or absolutely disinterested or objective in learning. Naturally, nobody is able to fully open the mind in researching or learning. To keep mind open is virtually a struggle a person launches against herself or himself. This struggle is not easy and the process of it is characterized by sorrow, anguish, sadness, and troubles. Clearly, most people hate to be involved in this struggle. They prefer the peace in their mind, or being assured.
It is human nature that people shun the tedious and onerous process of learning the real knowledge. It is also understandable that they hate the inevitable risks woven in the warp and weft of gaining knowledge. Is there risk in gaining real knowledge? The answer is certainly “yes”. Whenever one breaks through in a certain field, the hero receives more dangerous skeptical eyes or even slanders or persecution than applaud. Both Darwin and Giordano Bruno are telling case in point. In fact even in a classroom in a high school, if one student has gained the real knowledge in a certain field and her knowledge is different from what has been taught in the school, she will not be accepted by the teacher or the students. For instance, one of my classmates in high school refused to take part in the ridiculous examinations and left the school, she was punished by her parents, teachers, and event the community. Not until today did people realize that she was a talent and gifted student who gained the real knowledge.
Then why do people like to be assured? This question is yet beyond the cognition horizon of psychologists. But both theories and overwhelming accumulated empirical evidence demonstrate that people do like to be assured. Human beings generally hate the status of being “suspected”. They prefer to be reassured. This explains why a certain group of people become what we called scientists. This also sheds light on the existence of religion, numerology, astrology, and other non-mainstream what is labeled as pseudoscience. For instance, human beings in general have been confused about where human beings come from. This triggered the birth of natural selection and evolution theories, which at least partially assured a large group of people, scholars and laymen. Although it is clearly that evolution theories are weak in reasoning and fossil evidence, especially as far as that in Cambrian species is concerned, these hypotheses have dominated the stage of science. Why? Because human beings in general prefer to be reassured and Darwinism as a plausible systematical interpretation of the origination of creatures does play the role in reassuring people at large. Few people like to take the risks or trouble themselves to dig the real knowledge, which is in fact as sophisticated as a sophisticated thing can be.
In sum, most people want to be reassured rather than to attain the real knowledge which frequently hurls the heroes at risks.
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