Coupland's "Doubt" in Literary Context

To help place the favourable representation of Doubt that, as lecture is arguing, Douglas Coupland has applied in Hey Nostradamus! within a wider literary sensibility, I quoted Monday from Scottish writer William McIlvanney's contemporary Scottish novel Laidlaw. Here are the relevant passages:

"I mean if everybody could waken up tomorrow morning and have the courage of their doubts, not their convictions, the millenium would be here. I think false certainties are what destroy us....What's murder but a willed absolute, an invented certainty?"
....was surprised again to discover that the most certain thing about Laidlaw was his doubt. Everything came back to that, even his decisiveness....

William McIlvanney, Laidlaw: Harvest, San Diego, 1994. p 134, 218.)