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we can ever develop healthy habits of thinking about the doubts that rob us of our ease of mind. Peirce and the pragmatists say we can always do better than we’ve done so far, but there is a trick to staying on the right road—Peirce calls it the “road of inquiry.” The bottom line is this. To stay on a healthy road you need to be in a position to discover your own mistakes and to correct them when you find them. The trouble with the first three methods is that even though they often succeed in solving certain kinds of problems, the main thing we know is that our doubts disappear. We don’t know why, and we don’t necessarily know what to do when new problems occur. We cross our fingers and try what worked before.

But the last method is different. Peirce calls it the Method of Science, and by that he means that we formulate the problem carefully in light of the way it has actually inspired doubt in us. This requires very careful thinking about the problems and critical examination of the difference between what is and what is not really in doubt. The Method of Science requires that our hypotheses answer closely to what is genuinely in doubt, and an hypothesis should propose a course of action that will settle belief, but even if successful, it will not be regarded as knowledge. Genuine scientific knowledge is about what was carefully and experimentally tried but which failed to settle belief. How contrarian is that?

The bad news is that if Peirce is right, C still doesn’t really know if he likes green eggs and ham, he only knows that eating them settled the doubts in the one context he encountered. Wouldn’t it have been funny if, after all that, he tried them and didn’t like them? In that case, he would actually know more, since the hypothesis offered by Sam, that C would like them, would now be one we could safely treat as having been tried and found insufficient in at least one case. This we could file away for future purposes, and both Sam and C could agree that C doesn’t yet like green eggs and ham, but future trials may need to be undertaken to confirm the result. After all, they haven’t yet been tried on a plane to Spain.

CHAPTER SIX

McElligot’s Pool:

Epistemology (with Fish!)

Ron Novy

If I wait long enough, if I’m patient and cool,

Who knows what I’ll catch in McElligot’s Pool. (Pool)

People believe all sorts of things: that dogfish chase catfish, that coffee tastes better than beer, that over one million people live in Chicago, that no more than nine angels can balance on the head of a pin, that . . . you get the idea. There are really no rules governing what we can believe. However, some of our beliefs are not merely things we believe but are also things we know. What is it that must be added to a belief for it to be knowledge? For example, I could believe that catfish are chased by dogfish, but I cannot know this if for no other reason than that such bewhiskered and floppy-eared creatures don’t exist!1 On the other hand, I can know that there are over one million Chicagoans; there is, for instance, a reliable census upon which to base my belief. Figuring out what justifies beliefs—and how it is done—underlies much of our investigation into the nature of knowledge.

So, here’s the story: a farmer comes across a boy named Marco fishing in McElligot’s Pool and tells him: “You’re sort of a fool! / You’ll never catch fish / In McElligot’s Pool!” (Pool). Worse still, the boy is told that the pool is far too small to catch fish and that the locals use it as a trash receptacle. Ever the optimist, Marco replies: “Cause you never can tell / What goes on down below! / This pool might be bigger / Than you or I know!” (Pool).

Marco considers the possibility that his little pond is connected to the sea by a great underground river that flows under the highway and under the town. Then, in Seussian rhyme, he begins to list all the sorts of extraordinary fish (plus one gristly lobster and fifty spouting whales) that he might catch in McElligot’s Pool: “I might catch a thin fish, / I might catch a stout fish.