In previous articles, I have explored how trust, relationship and meaning are not static conditions that can simply be created or measured. They are processes that emerge through interaction over time.

This raises another question: What allows us to remain present in these processes when uncertainty appears?

These days, uncertainty is often treated as something to overcome. In design, innovation and organisational development, we have become highly skilled at solution-based thinking. We identify problems, analyse causes, generate options and move towards implementation.

This approach has created enormous value. It has helped us solve challenges, improve technologies and create systems that make many aspects of life more predictable.

Yet it also carries an implicit assumption: Uncertainty is something we should reduce as quickly as possible. The faster we can move from ambiguity to clarity, from questions to answers, from complexity to solutions, the better.

But what happens when the situation itself is still changing? What happens when the challenge is not a lack of information, but the fact that our existing ways of understanding no longer fully fit what is emerging?

Uncertainty is not always a problem to eliminate. It may be a signal that something new is trying to emerge.

Doubt is not the problem. Premature certainty is.

Doubt is not ignorance

In many contexts, doubt is associated with weakness.

  • A person who hesitates may appear less competent.
  • A leader who says “I do not know yet” may be perceived as lacking direction.
  • A team that continues questioning may be seen as unable to make decisions.

Have we misunderstood the role of doubt?

A particular trajectory within Western thought has often associated knowledge with certainty, clear categories and the distinction between true and false. This epistemological orientation has shaped many of our institutions: education, science, organisations and decision-making systems.

This orientation has contributed enormously to human progress. The ability to observe, categorise, measure and test has enabled remarkable scientific discoveries and technological developments.

But every strength also creates blind spots…

When knowledge becomes primarily associated with finding the correct answer, we can become less attentive to phenomena that emerge through relationships, context and change.

Other knowledge traditions have long emphasised relationality, interdependence and situated understanding. As thinkers such as Rik Pinxten have explored, different ways of knowing have always existed alongside dominant knowledge systems.

Today, many Western fields are rediscovering aspects of these perspectives through complexity science, systems thinking and relational approaches. The question is therefore not whether one epistemology is right and another is wrong.

The question is, what becomes visible when we broaden the ways through which we understand knowledge itself?

Doubt does not necessarily mean: I know too little.

It can mean: The situation has changed, and my current understanding has not yet reorganised.

Doubt appears when our existing map no longer fully matches the territory we are encountering. It appears not as failure, not as a lack of intelligence, but as a signal that something in the relational field is changing.

Doubt appears... as a signal that something in the relational field is changing.

Relational emergence

A similarly influential perspective within modern Western thought has often approached intelligence as an individual capacity. Intelligence is something someone possesses. Knowledge is something someone acquires. Thinking happens inside a mind. This perspective has produced important insights. But many contemporary challenges reveal its limitations.

Meaning does not emerge in isolation. It emerges through interaction, interpretation, and participation.

I relate, therefore meaning can emerge.

Not as a replacement for Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, but as a different epistemological starting point.

The cogito places the thinking individual at the centre of knowledge: the mind observing, interpreting and making sense of the world. A relational perspective starts from another assumption: that meaning does not emerge from an isolated mind alone, but through participation in an evolving relational field.

This does not mean that individuals disappear. Individuals remain essential, but they are never separate from the relationships, histories, cultures and contexts through which they make sense of the world.

Individuals remain essential, but they are never separate from the relationships, histories, cultures and contexts through which they make sense of the world.

Nor does it mean that any interaction automatically creates meaning. Relationality requires attention, responsiveness and the willingness to remain engaged when interpretations differ.

Interaction can create connection. Relationship requires the willingness to remain engaged when interpretations differ.

From this perspective, intelligence is not only something individuals possess. It can also emerge between people, through processes of interaction, interpretation and shared meaning-making.

And similarly, doubt is not only an experience located inside an individual mind. It can emerge when the relationship between ourselves, others and the world is changing — when our existing understanding no longer fully fits what we encounter.

Relationships with uncertainty

The challenge is not uncertainty itself.
The challenge is our relationship with uncertainty.
When uncertainty becomes difficult to tolerate, we often move quickly towards closure.

Uncertainty → discomfort → premature certainty → closure

We search for simple explanations.
We look for someone or something to blame.
We divide complexity into categories of right and wrong, success and failure, us and them…

This does not happen because people are incapable of thinking. It happens because uncertainty is difficult to carry without relational infrastructures that allow people to explore, question, and create meaning together.

... uncertainty is difficult to carry without relational infrastructures that allow people to explore, question, and create meaning together.

This is visible at a societal level.

Polarisation, for example, is not simply a disagreement about facts. It can also be understood as a symptom of disrupted relational fields. When people no longer experience spaces where difference, uncertainty and complexity can be processed together, certainty can become a form of protection. Polarisation has many causes… political, economic, historical and cultural.

Yet one relational dimension is often overlooked: What happens when societies lose spaces where uncertainty and difference can be processed together?

Not because people want conflict.
But because certainty can temporarily reduce the discomfort of not knowing.

What cannot be controlled

We are exceptionally good at creating systems of control.

We plan. We measure. We predict. We optimise.

Again, this is not inherently problematic.
Control creates safety.
Prediction creates efficiency.

But there is a paradox: The more we build systems around control, the less capable we sometimes become of relating to what cannot be controlled. Some of the deepest human experiences cannot be fully managed: illness, loss, change, uncertainty, relationships, identity and meaning.

People who have experienced situations where control is fundamentally limited sometimes develop a different relationship with uncertainty. Not because uncertainty becomes easy, but because they have had to cultivate capacities to live with what cannot be fully controlled.

This is a form of relational metacognition in extreme circumstances.

Yet many systems still fail to recognise these forms of knowledge and experience as valuable human capabilities.

We often reward those who can create certainty.

We less often recognise those who have learned how to remain capable when certainty disappears.

Systems that reduce uncertainty

Contemporary systems are often designed around reducing uncertainty. AI systems, digital platforms, organisations and educational structures increasingly aim to increase efficiency, create predictability and support decision-making.

This is not inherently problematic.

A navigation system does not need you to get lost before showing you the route. Efficiency has value. Predictability has value.

But every system operates through a representation of reality.
And eventually, reality exceeds the representation.

Think about using GPS.

Most of the time, it works beautifully. It reduces cognitive effort and helps us reach places we might never have found ourselves. Until something unexpected happens.

A road is closed. A bridge is unavailable. The map is outdated. The route leads somewhere that no longer makes sense. The system recalculates. And sometimes it keeps trying to return us to the original route because, according to its model, that remains the logical option.

At that moment, the challenge is no longer whether the system can calculate.

The challenge becomes, can we recognise when the model no longer fits reality? Do we continue following instructions because uncertainty feels uncomfortable?

Or do we step back into relationship with the situation? Do we observe? Do we use our own experience? Do we ask someone nearby? Do we accept that we temporarily do not know?

The GPS is not the problem.

The problem emerges when we forget that the GPS is a model, not reality itself.

We can apply this to every model we create. A model can guide perception, but it cannot replace participation in reality.

A model can guide perception, but it cannot replace participation in reality.

The same principle applies beyond individual relationships. It can be observed in classrooms, teams, organisations and families. A difficult question, an unexpected disagreement or a moment of confusion can easily be interpreted as a problem to solve. Yet these moments may also reveal where collective understanding needs to evolve.

A difficult conversation with a colleague, partner or family member often activates our internal “navigation system”. We interpret the situation through previous experiences and existing assumptions:

  • They do not respect me.
  • They are resistant.
  • They do not understand.

Sometimes these interpretations are accurate.
But sometimes they are outdated maps.
The tension itself may contain a signal.

A disagreement may reveal an assumption that was never made explicit.
A conflict may indicate that the relationship has changed.

The question then becomes not:

  • Who is right?

But,

  • What is this situation asking us to notice?

Staying together in the unfinished

This is where relational metacognition becomes important.

Not as another framework to apply. Not as another tool to optimise behaviour.

But as a human capacity:

  • The capacity to remain aware of ourselves, others and the evolving relational field we are part of.
  • The capacity to stay present when meaning is still forming.
  • The capacity to resist the temptation to close uncertainty too quickly.

The challenge is whether we still create enough spaces where meaning can emerge. Because learning, transformation, and relationships do not happen only when we have answers. They happen when we remain open long enough for new understanding to develop.

This is the human capacity to remain together in an unfinished relational process long enough for new meaning to emerge.

Doubt is not a weakness to overcome. It is often the signal that invites us to relate differently.

Doubt is not the absence of knowledge.

Doubt is the moment where our relationship with reality asks to be renewed.

References

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This article was adapted from a post on Evelien Verschroeven's Medium page, where you can find more explorations of relational anthropology that invite you to reframe what you think you know.