Today’s topic is ambiguity, something that mainstream U.S. culture often doesn’t like very much.

Certainty looks strong and uncertainty looks wimpy.

Etymologically, “ambiguity” means something like “going both ways.” The Latin root “ambi-“ gives us “ambidextrous “ and “ambivalent.” It is related to the Greek root “amphi-,” as in “amphibian,” living both on land and in water.

What got me thinking about ambiguity this weekend? At first I was going to write about aging. I’m almost 60 and it’s a strange age [all ages are strange, because life is strange, but 60 is strange in a strange way].

At 60, you’re definitely old and still young.

Actually, I think about ambiguity every day. In my German-English translation workshop, we discover that every word is ambiguous.

Try to transplant a meaning by detaching it from one word and attaching it to another. You’ll realize that words and meanings are two different things. What felt like firm ground is unsteady.

And then there’s this week’s Internet sensation, that blasted dress of many colors. A trivial issue that actually takes us to the edges of our realities.

“Why is there any question?” said a voice on the NPR radio report. Even meant flippantly, this question bucks ambiguity.

But the neurologist being interviewed said that it is not the dress, nor our eyes, but our brains that create the ambiguity.

We have infinitely complex meaning-generating factories inside our heads. And the price of complexity is ambiguity. Just ask Adam and Eve!

It is understandable that many people shun ambiguity and look for certitudes. Fundamentalisms resist doubt and try to find infallible guides to life.

Endless online comments pit conviction against conviction. Often, intolerance of ambiguity becomes intolerance of others.

Sincerity is the currency of our public discourse. If someone is sure of something, questioning it means questioning that person, which is rude.

And so for some people who enjoy the impersonality of the Internet, the best way to argue is to get personal. To be rude. To insult.

One purpose of a college education is to build tolerance for ambiguity — and thus for others! It gives us tools to deal with

uncertainty.

Our least-refined intellectual tools try to eliminate ambiguity. Our best tools help us understand it.

The humanities are a training ground for learning to coexist with multiple meanings. Good fiction, for example, tries to portray reality accurately while retaining its inherent

ambiguity.

That’s why it has value alongside other models of knowledge that adhere more to direct correspondences between statements and the reality “out there.”

But natural and social scientists will also tell you that one of their main jobs is to balance accuracy and ambiguity. Particle or wave? Yes. Nature or nurture? Yes. Warming or cooling? Yes. Helpful or damaging? Yes. Healthy or ill? Yes. Male or female? Yes. Free or constrained? Yes.

This is how sophisticated people think. A good university education helps you become sophisticated.

And, by the way, “sophisticated” means both “subtle” and “deceptive.”

What’s up with that?