Mapping Progress by Moving Through Uncertainty
Created at: September 8, 2025
The map of progress is drawn by those who keep moving despite doubt. — Søren Kierkegaard
Movement Draws the Map
Seen this way, the metaphor is literal before it becomes philosophical: maps grow where footsteps go. Early portolan charts (13th–16th centuries) thickened their coastlines along routes actually sailed, while blank interiors stayed speculative. Likewise, progress is not a preprinted diagram we follow but a sketch that darkens only as we advance. Waiting for perfect clarity preserves white space; taking the next step turns fog into contour. Thus the cartography of improvement—whether in a life, a lab, or a city—emerges from motion through uncertainty, not from certainty achieved in place.
Kierkegaard’s Leap Amid Anxiety
Turning to Kierkegaard, doubt is not an obstacle to existence but its atmosphere. In The Concept of Anxiety (1844), he calls anxiety “the dizziness of freedom,” suggesting that the possibility to choose generates vertigo. Fear and Trembling (1843) dramatizes this in Abraham’s paradoxical leap, where commitment occurs without guarantees. And in Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), he contends that “subjectivity is truth,” meaning that authentic decisions are forged in the furnace of uncertainty. Progress, by this light, is a series of courageous steps—each one a leap across doubt’s gap—that gradually draws the route others can trace.
Science Advances Under Doubt
In the sciences, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw. Charles Darwin’s notebooks (1837–38) depict tentative branching diagrams and questions he refined for decades before On the Origin of Species (1859). Karl Popper later codified this ethos: knowledge grows through conjectures that risk refutation (Conjectures and Refutations, 1963). Even the tactile residue of inquiry carries this mark—Marie Curie’s lab notebooks remain radioactive, a stark reminder that discovery proceeds through hazardous unknowns. Thus, scientific progress is cartographic: hypotheses venture into blank regions, experiments redraw borders, and replication thickens the lines.
Iteration as Navigation in Innovation
Likewise in invention, forward motion—measured, reversible, persistent—beats waiting for perfect plans. The Wright brothers, finding trusted lift tables unreliable, built a wind tunnel and tested hundreds of airfoils before powered flight (McCullough, The Wright Brothers, 2015). A century later, James Dyson recounts thousands of prototypes on the way to a bagless vacuum (Invention: A Life, 2021). Each iteration is a waypoint; each failure, a corrected bearing. When innovators keep moving amid doubt, they do more than solve problems—they leave behind a legible path that others can reuse and extend.
Whose Maps Count? Power and Inclusion
At the same time, every map reveals a mapmaker. Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps (1992) shows how cartography encodes authority: what is named, centered, or omitted reflects power. Progress, then, widens when more travelers are allowed to chart. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team mobilized volunteers and local knowledge to fill missing streets and services, accelerating aid. When marginalized voices move and record their routes, the world’s atlas gains accuracy and justice. The future is not merely discovered; it is negotiated by whose steps get inscribed.
Practices for Moving Through Doubt
Practically speaking, small, frequent moves convert uncertainty into information. The OODA loop—observe, orient, decide, act—popularized by John Boyd, frames rapid cycles that learn faster than circumstances change. Teresa Amabile’s research on the “progress principle” finds that visible small wins sustain motivation (The Progress Principle, 2011). Tactics follow: define falsifiable next steps, run time-boxed tests, keep a decision log, conduct premortems, and seek diverse feedback early. Through such habits, doubt becomes data, motion becomes method, and the evolving map—drawn in pencil, updated in ink—shows where to go next.