In a combative world where even sport is as joyless as was trench warfare in another age, the quirky ending of the Headingly cricket Test was an unexpected delight. In successive balls a botched run-out and an umpire's decision that would have been overturned had the Australians' right to review not been exhausted left the way open to an extraordinary victory to the English team and pride by both teams.
The game was followed by the usual joyless comment about the failure of the umpire to get it right, and some wiser reflection about the accuracy of the electronic system used in appeals against initial decisions. These events prompt wider reflection on the broader quest for certainty in human affairs, and the consequent impatience with human judgment, whether in weather forecasting, sporting adjudication, judicial verdicts, student assessment or government grants.
It is common to distrust human experience and intuition and to seek in technology infallible means of assessment that do not depend on human subjectivity. Human judgments are liable to error. Judgments relying on sophisticated technology promise certainty in which the vagaries of human judgment and difference are removed.
A world in which there is no error and in which certain answers can be given to all human questions is understandably attractive. It can be sought in different ways. The first way is to adhere firmly to general principles that decide specific cases regardless of their confusing differences from one another. Dedicated supporters of football teams often work on the principle that their players are always in the right. Whenever the whistle may blow it must blow in their favour.
In times of public anxiety, too, people can have certainty about the general principles that should determine judicial decisions. In the American South many worked on the principle that a black man accused of killing a white woman was necessarily guilty and that a white man accused of killing a black woman was necessarily innocent. They credited and discredited their word accordingly. They then expected the courts to give judgments that reflected their certainties. If they did not, mobs would sometimes take it on themselves to administer justice in accordance with their certainties.
In the face of certainty about decisions taken in sporting contests or in courts of justice, reasoned argument and the sifting of evidence about the particularity of each situation are irrelevant. Their conclusions will be used as weapons by those who agree