Wednesday, August 15, 2007

The casual agnostic

During a recent telephone conversation, the Treasury Solicitor, in a gently aporetic style, was questioning the ability of our researcher to investigate matters “going back the best part of 35 years” and make pronouncements on the design of the Gaul’s chutes, such a long time after their conception.
So, the truth about the causes for the loss of the Gaul, the Treasury Solicitor believes, is unknowable to man – too remote and complex a subject for a mortal to wrap his mind around.

Well, it may be so, but that didn’t prevent the 2004 RFI panel, only three years ago, to formulate, rather axiomatically, their opinions; it didn’t stop justice Steel from declaring that the only possible cause for the tragedy was the fact that the duff and offal chutes on the Gaul had been left open by the crew and, just a few months ago, it didn’t put the Treasury Solicitor himself off professing his unshaken belief in the results of the Formal Investigation and in the soundness of the chutes’ design either.

Nevertheless, the latter now holds that we cannot establish that something caused something else, or ever know anything for certain.

As we can never know the cause of the Universe

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