Hunch and fact

A successful medical doctor friend once told me that "a doctor is only as good as his instincts." There are any number of tests you can run on a patient, any number of directions you can go. I was edified. This was very different from the way I though it was with the "hard" science of medicine. I had never realized the amount of seasoned guesswork that goes into a good diagnosis.

On Thursdays I tutor a doctor in English. Her specialty is acupuncture and other Eastern medicine, and she ran a clinic in Pusan. During one of our sessions she offered to do a quick evaluation of my health. Her expert hands kneaded my wrist---highly sensitive fingers that had taken thousands of pulses. She told me she can tell a lot by pulse and facial coloring. I was hopefully incredulous. She proceeded to say that she begins with those sensory data, and then makes a hunch, and in a high percentage of cases her initial hunch is borne out by subsequent investigation.

It may be similar in the journalism business. A crack sleuth may be "only as good as his instincts." He starts with a hunch, and this is not a lunatic methodology. The reason is that a "hunch" or "instinct" is not the whimsical impulse that those words might at first suggest. It is not to be pooh-poohed as unscientific or irrational. We moderns tend to think that "what my net can't catch ain't fish." But man is more than what he can quantify and explain. Many things go into the hopper to spit out insight.

Knowledge is an interaction of three continuously ongoing dynamics---the Normative, Situational, and Existential. The Christian recognizes the Normative as God's revelation. The Situational is all the world, taken in through our senses. The Existential involves us as the receiver and processor of that information. There is a mysterious reciprocity.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.