TO KNOW THE TRUTH…
One of humanity’s most poignant topics has always been how to know if something is true, and there’s never been a time like these when it’s more important. Spinning, pishing, fake news, trolling, docuadvertising, Madison Avenue advertising and marketing…is there anything left monitized or not that can be counted on as being truely true?
Supposedly, in the millennia that humans have been around, there have been only three ways identified to “know the truth.”
First, there’s authority, perhaps the oldest, that’s been around for over 3,000 years. It’s assumed that an authority (classically “the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience” but academically speaking, “a person with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject; an expert”) who has spent time investigating a topic would know more about it and thereby be closer to the truth. Unfortunately, the ancient Greek philosophers proved this approach iffy at best when they identified the five appeals to which people invariably fell subject: pathos (emotional argumentation), ethos (moral argumentation), keiros (popularity), numos (legal argumentation) and last, but not least, logos (reasoning and logic). Of these, only logos was said to have “truth value,” meaning a reasonable liklihood of truthfulness as long as one carefully confirmed all the premises as truthful. During the middle ages when the Church held authority (in both senses of the definition and all five appeals) held tightly to beliefs like the flatness of the earth and an earth-centric planetary system and universe were people inclined to look for a second way to know the truth.
The Church’s beliefs slowly succumbed to observations during the 1700’s that yielded the same results when repeated over and over again — the second classic pathway to truth: Science (with a capital “S”). Science was clasped onto tightly and held to be the ultimate way to decipher truth until the 1950’s, the introduction of probability, computers and statistics, and the realization that some things weren’t strictly repeatable, and thereby scientific, like history, faith and human behavior.
Statistics — the third pathway to truth — provided a way to extract truth from not only non-repetitive events, but events involving huge numbers of parts or participants. “If it isn’t statistically significant, it isn’t true” seemed the catchword until it became clear that what was true for large masses was not necessarily true for any of the parts or participants.
That’s it as far as I know. 3000+ years and only three ways to find out the truth, none of them applicable to all situations and all subject to misinformation and outright lying. Three thousand, three hundred, thirty years in their discovery and subsequent application, suggesting a Fibonacci sequence, suggesting the next pathway to truth would occur within the next 3 years. I’ve suggested in THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) that Sci-Fu (science-based futuring) might be one approach; however, what may be the fourth and hopefully long sought “Unified Truth Pathway” might be based on M-Superstring Theory/Multi-verse Theory. Might be. And that’s the topic for my next post.
The Edge of Madness
Raymond Gaynor
Author of THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020)
Co-author with A. G. Hayes of QUANTUM DEATH (Savant 2016) and with William Maltese of TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009)
Author website at https://garymartine.yolasite.com/raym...
Author Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/raymond.gayn...
Author Twitter site at https://www.savantbooksandpublication...
Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Raymond-Gaynor...
Amazon Goodreads author page at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Savant Books and Publications | Aignos Publishing author page at https://www.savantbooksandpublication...
Distributed by Savant Distribution at https://www.savantdistribution.com/
Supposedly, in the millennia that humans have been around, there have been only three ways identified to “know the truth.”
First, there’s authority, perhaps the oldest, that’s been around for over 3,000 years. It’s assumed that an authority (classically “the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience” but academically speaking, “a person with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject; an expert”) who has spent time investigating a topic would know more about it and thereby be closer to the truth. Unfortunately, the ancient Greek philosophers proved this approach iffy at best when they identified the five appeals to which people invariably fell subject: pathos (emotional argumentation), ethos (moral argumentation), keiros (popularity), numos (legal argumentation) and last, but not least, logos (reasoning and logic). Of these, only logos was said to have “truth value,” meaning a reasonable liklihood of truthfulness as long as one carefully confirmed all the premises as truthful. During the middle ages when the Church held authority (in both senses of the definition and all five appeals) held tightly to beliefs like the flatness of the earth and an earth-centric planetary system and universe were people inclined to look for a second way to know the truth.
The Church’s beliefs slowly succumbed to observations during the 1700’s that yielded the same results when repeated over and over again — the second classic pathway to truth: Science (with a capital “S”). Science was clasped onto tightly and held to be the ultimate way to decipher truth until the 1950’s, the introduction of probability, computers and statistics, and the realization that some things weren’t strictly repeatable, and thereby scientific, like history, faith and human behavior.
Statistics — the third pathway to truth — provided a way to extract truth from not only non-repetitive events, but events involving huge numbers of parts or participants. “If it isn’t statistically significant, it isn’t true” seemed the catchword until it became clear that what was true for large masses was not necessarily true for any of the parts or participants.
That’s it as far as I know. 3000+ years and only three ways to find out the truth, none of them applicable to all situations and all subject to misinformation and outright lying. Three thousand, three hundred, thirty years in their discovery and subsequent application, suggesting a Fibonacci sequence, suggesting the next pathway to truth would occur within the next 3 years. I’ve suggested in THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) that Sci-Fu (science-based futuring) might be one approach; however, what may be the fourth and hopefully long sought “Unified Truth Pathway” might be based on M-Superstring Theory/Multi-verse Theory. Might be. And that’s the topic for my next post.
The Edge of Madness
Raymond Gaynor
Author of THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020)
Co-author with A. G. Hayes of QUANTUM DEATH (Savant 2016) and with William Maltese of TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009)
Author website at https://garymartine.yolasite.com/raym...
Author Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/raymond.gayn...
Author Twitter site at https://www.savantbooksandpublication...
Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Raymond-Gaynor...
Amazon Goodreads author page at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Savant Books and Publications | Aignos Publishing author page at https://www.savantbooksandpublication...
Distributed by Savant Distribution at https://www.savantdistribution.com/
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