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CHAPTER XI UNCERTAINTY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS The general character of the connection between progress and uncertainty has been dealt with at various points in the course of our inquiry. Change of some kind is prerequi- site to the existence of uncertainty; in an absolutely un- changing world the future would be accurately foreknown, since it would be exactly like the past. Change in some sense is a condition of the existence of any problem what- ever in connection with life or conduct, and is the actual condition of most of the problems of pure thought, since these are after all more or less related to practical require- ments. We live in a world full of contradiction and para- dox, a fact of which perhaps the most fundamental illus- tration is this : that the existence of a problem of knowledge depends on the future being different from the past, while the possibility of the solution of the problem depends on the future being like the past. The key to the paradox, as we have argued above (chapter vii), is to be found in two facts. In the first place, we analyze our world into objects which behave more or less consistently. That is, we recog- nize in things the unchanging property of changing in cer- tain ways. If this process could be carried out to complete- ness, we should have a completely knowable world. It would also, however, be in the practical sense an un- changing world. It is a fact familiar to students of our thought processes that we thus explain change by explain- ing it away. The historic problem of thought is this of real change. The point for us here is that change according to known law (whether or not we call it change) does not give rise to uncertainty. What we practically mean by a static world is one in which all change is of this character. But the process of formulating change in terms of un-