Can you interpret: "Today´s cultivated people duty is to sow doubt, no longer to harvest certainties".

Question

This is a quotation from Norberto Bobbio that I got from an Umberto Eco book.
(Any error in translation is mine, please forgive or correct if you know the original)

Answer 1

I believe it means that educated people have an obligation to question authority rather than to merely accept the status quo as an absolute truth.


Correct English translation:
"Today, more than ever, cultured men have the duty to raise doubts rather than collect certitudes."

Original Italian:
"il compito degli uomini di cultura è più che mai oggi quello di seminare dei dubbi, non già di raccogliere certezze."




Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004)

Norberto Bobbio, one of the foremost political thinkers in postwar Italy. In dramatic and lively prose, Bobbio guides us through some of the most significant events of the twentieth century, charting their influence on his life and work.
Born in 1909 in Turin, Norberto Bobbio's early life was marked by the experience of growing up in Mussolini's Italy – an experience that helped to shape his passionate commitment to the anti-fascist cause. As a result of these early experiences, Bobbio has tirelessly emphasized the fundamental, unassailable importance of democratic rights in the modern state. He has been a voice of reason and moderation in a political context where democratic values have often been threatened by extremes.

He was a lawyer, a philosopher, a politician, a law professor, senator, supporter of human rights and social reforms.

He died on the 9th of January 2004.

Answer 2

Sounds very similar to: Science is evidence with out walk in the park and faith is walk in the park with out evidence. Religious individuals have given up watching for proof, they easily think some thing. Intellectuals, nevertheless, query the whole thing within the quest to understand "why is it so?". They are the cultivated individuals. *