The Trouble With Truth
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”No, Oscar. The truth is what it is. Pure. Simple. The trouble with truth is in our inability to precisely observe and thoroughly understand it.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Take, for example, Sir Isaac's observation of the apple falling from the tree. From that observation came Newtonian mechanics through reasoning. The force required to separate the apple from the tree is equal the mass of the apple times the acceleration of gravity. Indeed, we had discovered one of God's little secrets — an "is", pure and simple — in which we could believe. Indeed, we fueled the Industrial Revolution with it and sent men to the moon with it.
Trouble is that we later learned Newton's Laws are approximations of truth, of what "is". Time is not invariant. Mass can not only be decrease with speed but also converted into energy. Boom! Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. And, that fuels atomic bombs and nuclear power plants.
Then, to make matters even worse, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle shewed that if we know where the apple is at any moment, we cannot know exactly how fast it is falling and that if we know how fast it is falling at any moment, we cannot know exactly where it is. In other words, we will always have some error in our observations which will always produce some error in our beliefs. Thus, we are left to connect our fuzzy observations to our fuzzy beliefs with fuzzy logic.
Be not afraid, Dear Reader, of fuzzy logic for which "is" can truly exist in two forms at once. It is used in automobile controls, air conditioners, digital imagery, dishwashers, weather radar, textual language filters, pattern recognition and many other useful applications.
Yes, Oscar, truth is rarely pure and never simple for us mere mortals. Indeed, as our Muslim brethren believe:
Only Allah knows perfection.
So, the truth then is the exact/perfect conformity of the conclusions from our observations (vulgo research) with the natural laws - known and unknown, always subject to a Heisenbergian uncertainty.
ReplyDeleteOr like the truth that you tell your doctor when he or she asks, “ How much do you drink?” Your answer may depend on whether you think your doctor believes you or not. Most folks who drink probably answer politely with, “I have one drink or a glass of wine before dinner,” and I expect most doctors don’t believe their patients, so your doctor multiplies whatever you tell him by three for his records. I was afraid to tell my doctor the truth, because that number multiplied by three would seem to be excessive, so after a frank discussion off the record, I told him how many beers I really drink. I was relieved to see that in my chart some years later he had written, “Patient drinks a fair amount of beer”.....true.
ReplyDeleteThe first doctor I can remember was Dr. Ketchie. He told my mother that he didn’t approve of anyone her age drinking, but he recommended it for anyone of my grandfather’s age. I’m a grandfather, so it’s ok, right? I don’t remember if Dr. Scott ever asked me, but I do remember that he had a shot (from a needle, not a glass) for everything that ailed me, and sometimes I just got better thinking about going to see him and not really going.... true.
Another truth-story is when the medicine man asks you the silly question about your pains at a scale from ZERO to TEN.
ReplyDeleteEverybody knows what ZERO pains is, but how about TEN? And even if you knew what degree of pain 10 really is: What about linearity? So, what are your chances to tell him the truth?