Hello,
The main truth in life is understanding God. Although such understanding may be reached through various sources including science , math and so on, the role of philosophy cannot be denied. The main reason is that philosophy provides us with a path by which we can fathom out the true nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. In point of fact, philosophical theories and/or attitudes are important benchmarks which guide us to discover the principles of behaviour helping us to see the best path for finding the truth truth.
Best regards,
R. Biria
Hello,
The main truth in life is understanding God. Although such understanding may be reached through various sources including science , math and so on, the role of philosophy cannot be denied. The main reason is that philosophy provides us with a path by which we can fathom out the true nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. In point of fact, philosophical theories and/or attitudes are important benchmarks which guide us to discover the principles of behaviour helping us to see the best path for finding the truth truth.
Best regards,
R. Biria
Dear Dr. Kirk MacGregor , it is an interesting issue. Art is the mark of humanity... Science is a byproduct of that. Ten Thousand years from now. Science will still be a byproduct of human thought, it will still be Art. Science is meaningless without thought.
Dear RG colleagues, there's probably no thing as 'absolute truth'--all truth is contingent on something. Instead, think about truth as objective or subjective.
Science is very good at answering questions about objective reality: the world out there that you can see and touch, and is part of your shared experience with others.
Art is very good at helping you come to terms with your own subjective truths: what is important for you, and why, what is the meaning of your existence.
I think that there is no unique way to find truth. Different people depending on their way of thinking may find an easier path to truth via philosophy or art. Science and math can also be such paths, but they are good only if people are really specialists there.
It is combination of different factors as given in question? No single factor is self sufficient to find the truth.
The best means for finding the truth is not the same for different kinds of truth. For example, as for the truth about Nature, the combination of science and math would be the best means, and as for the truth about human behavior, the combination of art and philosophy would be the best means.
This is an important question. In addition to the helpful answers already given, there is a bit more to add.
The secret to finding a path to discovery in science, mathematics and art is to practice thinking outside the box. The attached drawing from @ Issam Sinjab suggests how one might go about thinking outside the box. Basically, start with a familiar problem and experiment with ways to solve the problem in an unconventional way.
For more about @ Issam Sinjab's suggested approach to thinking outside the box, see the discussion of What is art? at
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_art3
The truth is only an ingredient of a human logic operation, as the integer numbers can be for addition or product.
As an undergraduate college student I was happily majoring in science (Geology) and thought I was learning the grand "truth" about the universe, world, and organic life. I took a philosophy course as an elective and stayed immersed in that college for two years in a new quest to understand a broader understanding about "truth" and how we came to know anything from our human perspective. Returned to my studies in science and completed my degree in Geology (and philosophy) with a much more tempered view of the presented certainty of the "truth" I was being taught in the sciences, especially the quest for the notion of a THE "truth." As a science educator while I understand learners' oftentimes stated desire to learn some sort of grand "truth" via only a science lens, I recommend that such a human-driven quest for such an enlightenment to include being informed by as many ways of knowledge as available that we humans have constructed as conscious entities in this universe. These include a concern for evidence and critique in its knowledge generation and not a reliance on authority. Back to discussion of science, I do not portray it in my instruction as the ONE way or path to all "truth" but as a powerful path to a way of knowledge (epistemology) that if conducted rigorously and in alignment with its warrants that the community has developed and agreed upon, has much potential to provide us insight into answering "how" questions based on what evidence we can garner up-to-present (which makes all answers to our questions tentative to varying degrees based on the collection of new and relevant evidence). Fascinating to respond to your BIG question about paths of knowledge and ultimately about our need to have them as corporeal and complicated entities and to hear/learn from others in this discussion, Kirk.
"Absolute Thruth" is one of 99 Beautiful Names of God. The best path to search for the thruth is our heart. An honest heart always looks for the thruth. Another way to search for thruth is to contemplate Nature. We can perceive some names of God. We can find Beauty as God is the Absolute Beauty. We can find love of humans and animals. We can also find power; cool spring but also cold winter and hot summer.
Every path will take you there in a different way. Truth is one, but path is not one.
Dear Kirk MacGregor
Re: path to find truth
For me it has been, and is Buddhism, though I work in/on the science of behavior, where it may be especially helpful, given the present (starting stage) of Psychology. (I advocate a thoroughly rational and realistic Buddhism, as I think the necessary CORE is anyway and when you assess it and understand it "for yourself" -- as you MUST according to Buddhism itself -- you may well see it that way (if you have a good regard for any science, anyway).)
Buddhism is seen by many, and by me, as an approach to bettering the life of yourself and of all those around you ... (and hopefully of all sentient beings) -- and, not necessarily "religion", like other choices. While not so clearly needed in many sciences, I am confident there is some "room" there; the Way (
Truth is one, but path is not one. However, mathematics mostly is the main path to obtain truth and test truthfulness.
The problem here is that people want to think of truth as some highfalutin fancy-schmancy notion, and that leads to ridiculous talk about God being truth and the like. Truth is a humble workaday notion and we don’t need a definition of it to use it correctly, nor do we need to reify it. It is true that I am now typing this, that 2+2=4 (base 10), that Ottawa is in Canada, and that I did not have eggs for breakfast this morning. The way to truth starts with observation and commonsense and everything just builds on that, including the recognition that some truths are relative to context, that some truths are not well articulated and therefore mislead or are subject to misinterpretation, and that some supposed truths turn out to not have been true after all.
Any claim as to be the best path to the truth will tell us more about the person(s) making that claim, and what they understand truth to be, than about the truth of the best path to the truth.
I agree totally with Ben's wise statement on what we may gain from listening to others' thoughts regarding their chosen paths to the TRUTH. With that insight, next step in my opinion is to look carefully in the mirror of our own thinking and examine our own personal paths that we have taken, are taking, in a quest for an understanding of the universe, including ourselves. Listening respectfully to stories of their perspectives on the "truth" and paths to it, in my case and I would believe others, may even give us ideas on additional paths to explore (or at least acknowledge and extent respect even if they do not fit our own present beliefs of viable options to take).
Everything depends on what truth you are looking for.
If you are looking for the truths of physics - science and mathematics are the right path. If you are looking for the truth about man, then philosophy is good. If you are looking for the absolute truth then God and faith remain.
In my humble view, 'truth' belongs to a relative, rather than to an absolute category of human intellectual abstractions. Consequently, whenever we address the notion, achieving, or implications of truth, we better consider three (in some sense orthogonal) directions, namely: (i) the knowledge systems (epistemological frameworks) in which it is addressed (e.g. religious, authoritarian, scientific, commonsense, cultural, etc.), (ii) the philosophical stances (reasoning platforms) from which it is approached (e.g. empiricist, rationalist, positivist, realist, instrumentalist, pragmatist, phenomenologist, etc.), and (iii) the personal belief constructs (mental models) from which it is interpreted (engaged, objective, biased, uncertain, underinformed, etc.). It is important to see that stances exist not only in the scientific epistemology, but also in the other epistemological systems. In my personal interpretation, the meaning of truth may be completely different for different people (and perhaps this is how we are human). Therefore, the ways believed to lead to it should also be (and actually are) different ...
Yes, and the particular way we list the stances is itself a stance, and one that is consequential for how we understand each one to operate with respect to the others.
In modernity we have a tendency to divide up ways of knowing, and sometimes to give status to some methods over others. This has advantages and disadvantages. And it was not always so. I often find it helpful to return to Paul Feyerabend's Against Method. My favourite passage is:
"Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus - is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale. Primitive tribes has more detailed classifications of animals and plant than contemporary scientific zoology and botany, they know remedies whose effectiveness astounds physicians (while the pharmaceutical industry already smells here a new source of income), they have means of influencing their fellow men which science for a long time regarded as non-existent (voodoo), they solve difficult problems in ways which are still not quite understood (building of the pyramids; Polynesian travels), there existed a highly developed and internationally known astronomy in the old Stone Age, this astronomy was factually adequate as well asemotionally satisfying, it solved both physical and social problems (one cannot say the same about modern astronomy) and it was tested in very simple and ingenious ways (stone observatories in England and in the South Pacific; astronomical schools in Polynesia - for a more details treatment an references concerning all these assertions cf. my Einfuhrung in die Naturphilosophie). There was the domestication of animals, the invention of rotating agriculture, new types of plants were bred and kept pure by careful avoidance of cross fertilization, we have chemical inventions, we have a most amazing art that can compare with the best achievement of the present. True, there were no collective excursions to the moon, but single individuals, disregarding great dangers to their soul and their sanity, rose from sphere to sphere to sphere until they finally faced God himself in all His splendor while others changed into animals and back into humans again. At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas."
People may disagree about the means for determining truth, they may disagree about what sort of fact makes something true (e.g. correspondence, coherence, revelation, or convention), they may disagree about what justifies truth claims, etc. None of this need imply that the meaning of “truth” or “true” is different. Mathematicians, for example, may differ as to what makes mathematical statements true (e.g. correspondence vs. coherence) without disagreeing about what the true mathematical statements are. Scientists may likewise disagree about the best methods for achieving truth, without actually disagreeing about what is true, although they may uncritically conflate methods for determining what is true with the meaning of the word “true”. People may express a complex proposition that is a conjunction of supposedly true propositions from various domains and take themselves to be making a true statement thereby. Would that make sense if for each conjunct from a different domain the meaning of “true” were different? (That would basically rule out the truth-functionality of the connective "and" across different domains.)
Truth in science changes and empirical research knows several grades of likelihood. Science is motivated by doubt and contradiction. Religious faith which claims that TRUTH is equated with GOD valuete the doubt about God (or the doubt about the dogma that God is the truth) as blasphemy. This "truth" you find written in the Bible and in the Koran. The fate of nonbelievers and blasphemers is the hell, of course. I don't believe this.
dear Hein
you said about Koran (Quran)...the truth is a direction not a destination like GOD... hell is here, this world itslef is hell not another world... a wrong picture has illustrated from our faith..
Honestly, some of the comments here might be great for your Bible club, or other religious gathering, but otherwise, they make no sense. If "God" is "absolute truth," then how is it possible that so many people have such drastically different explanations for what God wants?
Can multiple "truths" co-exist, even when they contradict each other?
Does God expect, at the same time, that someone who "blasphemes" should be put to death, or for that matter "idolaters" should be annihilated, or you name it, and also command that for us is not to judge, because God will judge in due course? Or, just which religion or sect is the "true one," to convince us that we're killing the correct people, when they don't "believe"? We can't have people claiming "truth," when such basic supposed commands haven't been resolved.
Truth should be facts, as best we can determine them, at a point in time. Articulating formulaic, sound-good dogma does not make it "truth." Oh yeah, even if the formula-speak seems to gather many up-votes. That also doesn't make it "truth."
Dear Kirk,
That is a good question. Truth is the natural happening or existence of reality that is invariant of the way we see it or understand it. Nature and its laws that are studied by science are described by mathematics. Art is an expression of our unique understanding about things around us or beyond which may not be about truth of the things we express. What is an absolute truth is that truth is relative in time and space.
The existence of the universe and billions of galaxies with their stars and planets in our galaxy are truths, but when a star collapses to become a black hole, it is another truth different from the truth of a star that once existed, which indicates the relativity of truth of one kind.
Karl's post above is very useful in that it distinguishes the concept of truth from methods and criteria for truth. Different criteria and methods are appropriate in different domains but this doesn't mean that what is meant by truth need be different. Even where there is disagreement (rather than just difference) then it is still possible to agree on what is being disagreed about.
However, this doesn't mean that there is not more than one concept that goes by the name of truth. I think this is evident in this discussion. Some contributions think of truth in a "highfalutin" manner, and some as more descriptive/positivist. Perhaps it is useful to draw a distinction here and to expand our language to navigate it? Where we put these together are we not in danger of a category error? Should we really be arguing that what someone else means by truth is invalid and must be subsumed within the concept we favour?
This scans both ways. I have often been frustrated by modern Christianity's interpretation of faith in terms of belief, i.e. ascribing to the "correct" version of factual truth. This is a hollowing out of faith. I do not think it is supposed to be factual, and I think confusing it as factual (from inside) leads to problematic tendencies, such as are criticised above. By the same logic, it doesn't make sense for it to be critiqued as factual (from the outside). As the book of James says, "even the devil believes..". That is, being able to make factually true claims about the nature of the God's existence is not faith. For e.g. Tillich, justification through (not by) faith would include justification through doubt. Faith is a full sense should be as motivated by doubt and contradiction as Hein Retter reminds us that science is or should be (see Feyerabend).
(And to make clear the position from which I speak, I would always avoid using the word truth, in the context of science as well as that of religion and elsewhere, because of how it is mixed up with the real. I understand what is meant by truth in terms of correspondence between the world I experience and the world beyond my experience; and as I cannot in principle experience the world beyond my experience I cannot test the correspondence (see Ernst Von Glasersfeld). One can get by in both science and religion (and my own field of design) without needing to go beyond the world of experience.)
What is the best path to find truth: science, math, art, philosophy, or something else?
well science definitely not!
science always finds a temporary explanation of some aspect of the world (a truth? a contingent truth? a convenient truth?) until this explanation is proved to be wrong
math is a human construct, so essentially is always true, but it is only a logical truth... may not be the absolute TRUTH it seems to me you are referring to
for the other elements art, philosophy, or something else, it still depends very much on your definition of truth...
but likely philosophy (and religion) may provide further insights on searching for an absolute truth
but personally, I agree with previous comments on that, there's probably no thing as 'absolute truth'--all truth is contingent on something.
The best path to find truth is the education which has no ends. Thus one must strive for obtaining all kinds of knowledge which could be having science, math, art, philosophy, Sprituality, religion, etc.
The Truth without real knowledge might be the source of Fanaticism as the History shows. It is better to have always a percentage of humble ignorance within our minds preventing the foots to leave the ground.
The best path to find truth one must be true towards his duties and true to himself.
Using the metaphor of the path - each of these areas of human endeavor (and many more) are the bricks, or stones, or the grains of soil that make up the path as we attempt to find, understand, and discover truth. When a the path is missing the paving bricks it has holes which prevent us from moving comfortably towards the answers we seek. Some of these blocks are the side of the path, raised to help keep us on the path, and moving forward to a clearer understanding of truth. These raised guides to me are like faith and philosophy, helping us to truly see (and feel) our path. Other paving blocks, such as science and math, are the the strong base of our path. They provide and firm and strong support for our journey forward, for the steps we take. They provide understanding when discovered, and do not depend on shaky belief systems. Religion (often defined as "man's" attempt to understand the ultimate, and not being the ultimate) is more like the muddy and soft grains of the path that do not provide a firm footing, often slippery, causing us to fall (and pull others down with us), and maybe even falling off the path into a canyon. I believe that both faith (true guidance from God/ultimate being) and the world (discoverable using the tools of science and other disciplines) are both manifestations of "creation" and thus should be studied. We should not be satisfied with simple answers, but should continue on the long, winding, and often muddy path.
Meditation on God and obeying Him leads to both absolute truth and certainty. None of the other paths lead to certainty.
Miraculism is not a scientific method. You are confusing two different definitions of 'truth'. Realism is the ultimate truth, in my opinion.
The scientific method is the best means of approaching the truth that humanity has developed. But this is a method, not a specific field of knowledge. The method may be used with regards to physical processes or mental one. It may be used in connection with meditation with great results. But as soon as one limits the approach to truth, one also limits the truth that may be approached.
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