Has Any Truth Been Discovered? Comments

Thank you for your comment. I agree that the notion of truth is confusing and controversial. At the same time I believe that the value of definition appears to be rather overrated. If one says, for instance, “It’s raining now”, or, “Many tourists visit New York”, we don’t really need explanations to understand the plain meaning of these sentences. Nevertheless, let’s provide a common denotation for truth and define it as correspondence between belief and fact. Thus truth represents the opposite pole of falsity. Throughout history philosophers and scientists have struggled with the problem of what can we know for sure about ourselves and the universe. Unfortunately, truth remains murky and elusive. Even mathematics, the most exact among the sciences, in corresponding contexts fails to pass the test of irrefutable certainty. Bertrand Russell, a great mathematician, envisions “the perfect model of truth in the multiplication table, which is precise and certain and free from all temporal dross”. Yet, in his own playful definition of the Queen of Sciences, he defines mathematics as “the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true”. And the fact remains that in relation to nature the laws of mathematics are saturated with uncertainties. Furthermore, the cardinal concepts of science - such as matter, energy, space and time—represent poetic metaphors in an ultimately unknown reality. Let’s face it. We don’t have definite answers to fundamental existential questions: Is the universe finite or infinite? Who are we? Where do we come from? Are we alone in the cosmos? What is consciousness? Is the universe alive? In”The Problems of Philosophy”, Russell writes: “Has the universe any unity or plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? ’

Truly, by judging the discovery of truth, the truth is discovered. Nicely envisioned.

Confusing, controversial and as always, with me at least, dependent on an agreed upon definition. In this case; truth.