A journey through the nature of doubt in Latin, Greek and Arabic Languages – Part 4

In the previous post I was drawn to conclude that suspicion, in its own peculiar nature, founds itself on the consideration of things that are uncertain and doubtful themselves. Through what we’ve seen so far, I think it is correct to assume that suspicion is not necessarily endemic to the wavering doubt, but it sure is endemic in a context where doubt has come to an halt. In other words, some individuals do maintain their wavering doubt throughout their entire life, whereas others put an end to the balancing of uncertainty by erecting a personal creed that is not founded on a firm basis.

IV Part – Straitening doubt

I would now like to invite you to consider another kind of doubt that we can find in two Arabic roots: حرج (hrj), strait, or narrow; to become contracted, to doubt; to be in difficulty; and ضيق (Diq), narrow,  or strait (a thing, a place); difficult, or distressing; doubt in the heart, straitness in the mind; poverty. These two roots bear a striking evidence of what seems to be an association between doubt and that which is narrow, which, in turn, is associated with both difficulty and poverty.

I find it very interesting to see something similar to this in Greek word aporos, meaning without passage, having no way in, out, or through; hence, of places, impassable; of states or circumstances, impracticable, difficult; and of persons, without means or resources, helpless; poor, needy. You might be thinking that this word is lacking the notion of narrowness… But it isn’t; in fact, the word derives from poros, originally used to denote a means of passing a river, a ford, ferry, being as well used as synonym of a strait, that is, a narrow part of the sea. Through this idea of a narrow passage, poros was also used to allude to those tiny passages in the skin – the pores. But what I really would like you to keep in mind is that poros‘ general meaning was that of means of achieving, accomplishing, as for instance the means for performing a journey.

But you may now be asking yourselves where’s doubt in those Greek words? To answer to your pertinent question I’ll have to introduce one other Greek word, formed with that same root por-. The word is porew, that means, carry, convey by land or water, traverse. So, what we have here is the implicit idea of a passage through which something is carried. Now, if you add the prefix ‘a’ you get aporew, that is, without means or resources (just like aporos) – in other words, that passage through which things were conveyed no longer exists, and that’s why the word means, of things, to be left wanting; and in general, to be at loss, be in doubt, be puzzled.

Let’s now go back to poros as the means of passing a river to add that we find this same meaning in Arabic root عبر (‘br), a thing by means of which one crosses a river (a boat, a bridge or some other thing) – but as it also means interpreting, explaining, or studying a thing, it is possible to assume that having a means of passing, or traversing, an obstacle such as a river is the same as having the means to study and thus understand what is not known. So, basically, doubt in aporew is referred to as the same as the lacking of means to carry or convey understanding.

As to poverty being associated with the lack of means to carry things through a passage… it suffices you to remember that what we call trade is strictly dependent on the possibility of using certain means to import or export goods, and that the lack of passages to the sea, for instance, is what fuels conflicts like the one between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the first of them being called a landlocked country, that is, a country that is not only cut off from sea resources, but also impeded of having access to seaborne trade. This same notion adopts one other aspect in the word embargo, that literally means to stay in the port, that is, the prohibition of ships to sail, thus impeding the conveyance of goods. More recently, embargos’ aim is to act as a barrier to the passage of all sorts of goods, thus weakening, and eventually, leading a country to poverty, as was the case of the embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Iraq.

In the final part of this article, I’ll leave you with some other consequences of narrowness for you to think for yourselves

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