A journey through the nature of doubt in Latin, Greek and Arabic Languages – part 1

In this article you will be following a journey through the nature of doubt as seen by Latin, Greek and Arabic languages. During this journey, I will analyze some aspects of the concept and, whenever possible, they’ll brought to light with the help of the Qur’an.

I Part – Swinging doubt

As happiness, sorrow, grief, and pleasure, doubt is such an intrinsic part of our nature that no human creature is entitled to claim ignorance on what it feels to be in doubt. But the fact that is common to all of us, does not invalidate the need to understand it through reasoning; and as I try to avoid opinionism whenever possible, I will try to anatomize doubt with the help of words.

Having said that, the first think I want to show you is some simple definitions, taken from an English dictionary, that will serve as an introduction. So, to begin with, the noun doubt points to a lack of certainty, which makes it synonym with lack of trust, in which case doubt might be defined as one’s being suspicious about the truth, fact, or existence of something. In simple terms, to be in doubt can either show that one is uncertain on what to think about any given thing, or that one is tending to accept that, contrary to what others think, any given thing is actually false.

When looked at as a verb, doubt shows us that one of its consequences is to lead to an irresolution as on which of two or more possible alternatives, or courses, of action to choose. In relation to this irresoluteness we may also say that the mind vacillates or wavers… that is, it swings back and forth from one point to another without being able to make a decision… A bit like something that is hanging in the air, balancing between two points; and although there might be things that are nice to be looked at while balancing, like, for instance the tightrope-walker, I’m sure that nobody enjoys having that rather unnerving movement in one’s own mind.

Now we have a very powerful image to represent, or give shape to the act of doubting: the image of a tedious moving between two points that never change, as if one was always following the same way, back and forth, without getting, or seeing anything new – a monotonous landscape, indeed. And now that I’m making doubting equivalent to the useless treading of the same way back and forth, I remembered something very interesting: Latin verb dubito, from which doubt derived, literally means going two (from duo, two; and bito, to go on foot, walk) and, in general, to waver in opinion or judgment, to be irresolute, to hesitate. In other words, the concept of doubt itself is founded on the premise of the existence of two points of seemingly equal importance, that do not allow the mind to judge between them and therefore be able to choose.

In the second part of this article I will examine the Arabic root شك in general, and its meaning of doubt (shakin) in particular, to see if there’s a a connection between  the Latin and the Arabic concept of doubt.

View the Original article