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Excerpt from Chapter seven of the book ‘BEYOND SCIENCE’ : Appearance and reality by Robert Priddy
The multiple problem of what truth is seems so confusingly fathomless that there is quite simply no general consensus about it. Nowadays truth is seen by scientists simply as a concept representing factuality or else the validity of a theory. But this is far from being the whole truth of the matter. What has been regarded through the ages as truth is a value and it loses its full meaning if narrowed down to the mere matter of fact, as we shall see.
It was clear long ago to most ancient Indian and Greek philosophers that at least some things are mere ‘appearance’ and are misleading as to the ‘reality’ we think of as being ‘behind’ them or somehow beyond them. Western philosophers through the ages have held at least four distinct types of largely incompatible theories about truth (i.e. correspondence, coherence, pragmatic and dialectic theories).
What we see, hear and touch appears to give us certain knowledge of reality. Yet the first lesson of philosophy is that ‘not everything is as it appears’, for ‘the evidence of the senses’ is not always reliable. It has intrigued thinkers through the ages that any of our senses can at times give faulty perceptions. Our sensory organs themselves can be deranged, such as when the eyes develop double vision, jaundice makes things look yellow, or fever causes hallucinations. Even when healthy, the senses can ‘deceive’ us; mirages, a straight stick seems to bend in water, fast flashing lights blend into one single light and so on. Though these kinds of deception of the senses are not a major problem, it does mean that we do not always get a correct picture of sensory objects, let alone a full one.
Common sense falls down where there are appreciable differences between the accounts of different observers of the same event. An observer with one or another special type of training will report very differently to untrained people, and this can be due to the difference in their focus of interest and methods of observing etc. This is still obviously a very keen issue, for most scientific discovery begins from what has often been observed, but has not yet been recognised or accepted by science. However, the history of science shows clearly that what people have taken as common sense has quite often been either entirely false or inaccurate. The physical sciences have proven that our senses only give us a very truncated and often vague perception of many hidden ‘objective’ aspects of things which lie beyond the range of our unaided senses. Further than this, however, is the entire range of phenomena that arise in subjectivity, that is human consciousness and the mind, with all their vital influences on perception, interpretation and understanding of reality.
The main problem of sense observation is therefore that our impressions can only make sense to us if we interpret them. This interpretation process is mostly learned from childhood on so we are hardly ever aware of it taking place until we set out to study it systematically. A visit to a foreign country often shows strikingly how differently others seem to understand even the simplest matters such as bodily gestures or ways of ordering all manner of affairs. Many attitudes we took for granted we understood are then seen to be peculiar to our little corner of the world. From this we may learn how our own views are conditioned by our own culture and subjectivity. What we in fact perceive or neglect, in what context or light it appears to us and the meaning we attach to it very often depends upon deep-seated values. A right- and a left-wing politician will tend to observe and understand one and the same situation very differently. Personal, social and cultural values are often virtually impossible to neutralise for the purposes of detached observation.
When considering the fallibility of our senses as instruments for observing the ‘true’ nature of things, early philosophers realised that all the physical objects making up the sensory world are subject to change, sooner or later. The thing-world is therefore one of changing ‘appearances’, of eternal flux and of becoming rather than fixed being. So no object is ‘real’ in the very strictest sense of ‘real’, that is, permanently being only what it is.
Quantum physics - and the later developments in physics that modify or supplant it - is far removed from sensory experience in that the ideas which determine it are primarily mathematical, hence ideal rather than real. It is true that possible falsifications by observation are at the same time sought assiduously, because this is the agenda of science… to proceed by trial and error, where the errors are most crucially instructive. Approaching truth through falsification of hypotheses only takes place within this system of methodological axioms, which themselves remain unquestioned. Facts are therefore sought to fit in with new ideas through very complex rationalisations, often combined with systematic exclusion as irrelevant of facts of a quite different order that speak against the long-revered assumptions upon which all the paradigma of modern science rest. Truth can therefore, by this principle, never be reached, and thus nor can it be stated. To state any substantial truth provisionally would require that each statement be qualified and explained to such an extent as to make a permanently valid ‘theory of everything’ a practical impossibility. There are yet other very cogent reasons for this, which would probably be classified as theological.
The ‘first lesson of philosophy’, that no unchanging truth can be found in studying phenomena or the appearances external to ourselves, has largely been forgotten. This has led to neglect of subjectivity, consciousness and the mind, with all their vital influences on perception, interpretation and understanding of reality. In one sense, ‘temporal truth’ is real enough for us, but then again we realise it is ephemeral the real truth must lie somewhere beyond. This realisation was itself the driving idea behind early Indian thought and, later, European philosophy and consequently most of Western culture.
Most of the ‘kings of philosophy’ in line of succession from Socrates until Husserl - have firmly held that truth is immutable, or else it cannot be truth. They reject, on grounds of epistemological principle, that knowledge of truth can arise from sensory observation, that is from our sciences. Because spiritual truth is always held to be absolute and eternal, unchanging truth will not prove vulnerable to physics or other sciences because scientific knowledge is always developing and thus changing.
The situation can be summed up by saying that science is still necessarily fragmentary, and its approach to reality is through experience, which is never complete. Old theories are discarded or modified as research progresses. Sience is making constant inroads into the unknown, and has penetrated and refuted most convincingly many of what were regarded as ’spiritual truths’, but turned out to be superstitions or misunderstandings due to human failings in the recording and handing down of knowledge and beliefs. Of the ultimate truths concering the creation of consciousness and its relation to the cosmos, science remains largely ignorant, but it is beginning to apply it’s methods to many of the issues which underly these matters.
