The hardest state for a human being to sustain is that of open-endedness. We may know that uncertainty is the crucible of creativity , we may know that uncertainty is the key to democracy and good science , and yet in our longing for certainty we keep propping ourselves up from the elemental wobbliness of life on the crutch of opinion. Few things are more seductive to us than a ready opinion, and we brandish few things more flagrantly as we move through the world, slicing through its fundamental uncertainty with our insecure certitudes. The trouble with opinion is that it instantly islands us in the stream of life, cutting off its subject — and us along with it — from the interconnected totality of deep truth. A mighty antidote to that very human and very life-limiting impulse comes from The Log from the Sea of Cortez ( public library ) by John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968).…