Through a Glass Less Darkly

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the phrase, "Through a Glass Darkly." The reason I'm sure it's familiar is that, after a fairly thorough computer search, I found that the phrase, along with being found in I Corinthians 13, also appears in the title of some 40 books and 20 parts of books. In addition, it is either the title or is mentioned in 7 poems, 1 film, 3 musical scores, 15 theses, 7 plays, and 1 opera. Now, given its wide use, I've chosen to modify the phrase to "Through a Glass Less Darkly" so that this discussion would not be lost in a crowd of dark glasses. I also found it interesting to see the many ways in which the phrase is interpreted and used. The first of the two most prominent meanings centered around gloomy or dire predictions, and the second, the difficulty in finding unambiguous empirical truth and the need to deal with uncertainty. It is this second interpretation of "Through a Glass Darkly"-the difficulty in finding unambiguous empirical truth and the need to deal with uncertainty-that I want to discuss with you. But to get to that discussion, I have to first deal with some gloomy or dire predictions.