"In the search for certainty, it is natural..."
There's your problem. The search for certainty is not at all natural. It's not reasonable, despite claims to the contrary - as this passage illustrates:
"It seems to me that I am now sitting in a chair, at a table of a certain shape, on which I see sheets of paper with writing or print. By turning my head I see out of the window buildings and clouds and the sun. I believe that the sun is about ninety-three million miles from the earth; that it is a hot globe many times bigger than the earth; that, owing to the earth's rotation, it rises every morning, and will continue to do so for an indefinite time in the future.
I believe that, if any other normal person comes into my room, he will see the same chairs and tables and books and papers as I see, and that the table which I see is the same as the table which I feel pressing against my arm. All this seems to be so evident as to be hardly worth stating, except in answer to a man who doubts whether I know anything.
Yet all this may be reasonably doubted, and all of it requires much careful discussion before we can be sure that we have stated it in a form that is wholly true."
No, it may not 'reasonably' be doubted. It may doubted - as in Descartes' powerful demon, deceiving him to believe he has a body, and senses with which to experience the world, but it is not reasonable. It's skeptical doubt - beyond reason as defined by Occam's razor. The reasonable person lives with epistemic uncertainty. Only subjectivism requires absolute certainty - and makes a fiction of everything that can most reasonably be known, in order to establish certainty apropos of nothing but 'I think therefore I am.'
Descartes wrote Meditations while Galileo was on trial for the heresy of using scientific method to establish truth in contradiction of Biblical orthodoxy. The Church banned Galileo's works, while Descartes was granted an appointment to the royal court of Queen Christina of Sweden; and Western philosophy followed in this course, blowing smoke up the pampered arses of aristocrats - whose privilege was based on the Divine Rights of Kings. Subjectivism is no threat to religious dogma - or thereby, political power justified with reference to God, because subjectivism maintains the subjective/spiritual - in denial of the objective/mundane. If you imagine evil demons are tricking you; creating your sensory experience of an objective reality, then you can say 'perhaps, there really is no table' - but you can't call that reasonable doubt.
The reasonable explanation assumes that what we experience exists, and that sensory perception is essentially accurate to (not comprehensive of) what exists, for otherwise we could not navigate the world. Further, there's an apparent commonality of perception among people that allows for art and traffic lights, etc - and all this overwhelming evidence is cast aside quite unreasonably by subjectivism; because, the assumption of an evil demon deceiving you, creates more questions than it answers - and as Occam states, "It is vain to do with more that which can be done with fewer."
The simplest explanation is the best, and it is simpler to assume what we experience via the senses exists objectively - independently of our experience of it, than it is to imagine a all powerful demon creating a false reality we only seem to experience. Indeed, it's a natural phase in the cognitive development of infants that we learn object permanence. Further, it's inconceivable evolution would create senses that are inaccurate to reality - because they serve a survival function, and the design is only passed on insofar as they serve that purpose.
It's understandable that the Church adopted an antithetical relationship to science; and understandable that philosophy justified that stance - but it's a mistake. It's difficult to illustrate, because it didn't happen - but had the Church welcomed Galileo as discovering the means to understand the word of God made manifest in Creation, science would have been pursued, and integrated into politics, economics and society, and technology would have been developed and applied rationally, and we would have limitless clean energy - and would not have nuclear weapons. Having undermined science as truth however, technology has been applied for the power and profit of governments and industry - in competition with other ideologically defined groups, and so here we are - all threatened by climate change, and unable to reconcile the scientific reality with the ideological reality.
This is why it's important to recognise this as a mistake; because the opposite side of this coin - accepting science as truth and acting accordingly, is key to solving climate change. Naturally, one would focus this perspective like a laser on what is most fundamentally, and systematically necessary to a sustainable future, but recognising this error allows us to do an end run around our ideological identities and purposes, accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, and on that basis - drill into the hot molten interior of the earth, and provide the world with limitless clean energy to fight climate change.
