Article April 22, 2019 Issue

Beyond a shadow of a doubt

Nathan Talbot

To be beyond a shadow of a doubt. That’s a pretty high bar—getting beyond even a slight uncertainty. After all, the criminal justice system sets its standard at beyond merely a “reasonable” doubt.

We may think we know something beyond a shadow of a doubt. Nevertheless, even the most assured material sense sometimes gets it wrong. Consider criminal cases where individuals have been convicted by eyewitness testifiers but later evidence proved those eyewitnesses to have been mistaken.

The other day I saw an airplane take off. I watched it grow smaller and smaller as it moved farther into the distance. But did I really, without a doubt, see it become smaller? Why wasn’t I worried about all the people in the plane being crunched by an increasingly smaller plane? Of course, my human education helped me “see” what was really happening.

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