I recently read The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The title is based upon the figure from Greek mythology who invited passer-by’s to spend the night.  If they did not fit the bed he would either stretch them to fit or if they were too tall he would cut off the excess length.  The reality is that nobody ever fit the bed because Procrustes secretly had two beds a tall one and a short one.  We use the term metaphorically today as the nefarious practice of tailoring data so that it agrees with an established theory.

This book examines the way “we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences” (p.xii).

Taleb writes in an iconoclastic style reminiscent of his jeremiad against so-called experts in his bestselling book The Black Swan (click on the title to see my review).   The Black Swan reveals how events that you think are in your control are actually random and events that seem random may actually be in your control.  The reality is we see the world not as it is but as we are (see the math problem in my post “Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow” for an example of a thinking bias).

The Apostle Paul gives us this somber warning,

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise.  (1 Corinthians 3:18)

The Persian poet, Ibn Yamin describes four types of individuals:

• One who knows and knows that he knows
• One who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows
• One who doesn’t know, but knows that he doesn’t know.
• One who doesn’t know and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know

But in reality this is one individual because we have all four of these characteristics.  We must seek to be a person of wisdom but also realize that there are certain truths that we don’t know and in humility we must seek to learn.  May we in humility practice what we know and seek to learn that which we don’t know.

Dr. Rick Higgins

Professor of Discipleship, Columbia International University