The Search For Truth

 

If a scientist, philosopher, or anyone else tells you something is true, and in fact it is not true, it is not true. To say something is true does not make it true. Even though you are told something is true, if it is not true it is simply not true. On the other hand, if something is true it is true, even if you are told or believe that it is not.

 

If something is true or false, it is true or false whether we believe it to be true or false, or have not thought about its truth at all. If we believe a lamp is on a table, whether we have any evidence it is or not, and it is in fact on the table, then what we believe to be true is true. If we cannot determine whether or not the lamp is on the table, that does not change the actual position of the lamp. Even though without evidence we cannot prove a lamp is on a table, if it is on the table it is there and our belief is true.

 

Just because we cannot prove something is true does not in any way mean it is not true. Because we cannot prove, or disprove, we continue to exist after the death of our bodies does not mean that we do not continue to exist, or that we do. If we continue to exist after our physical death, then we continue to exist, and if we do not, then we do not.

 

If there is no one in a forest to hear a tree fall, does the sound of the tree falling really exist? If there is no one to see a tree fall, does it really fall at all? "Does an event occur if there are no observers?" is a valid question that perhaps can be answered "yes" only if the observer not only sees the event, but also continues to exist forever beyond the time of the event. In other words, if only inanimate objects surround an event such as the turning on of a lamp, perhaps it can be said no event has occurred since nothing has been seen, heard, etc., to change. Similarly, if a living observer witnesses an event but at some later date the observer ceases to exist, what value was the observation? Of course the argument can be made that seen or not seen photons stream from a light when it is turned on. Furthermore, it can be suggested that once seen or heard an event has “actualized”. Much depends on how you define "event", but underlying the question is a troublesome perception that goes beyond semantics, a feeling that a world without permanent observers lacks anything similar to what we call "reality".

 

Even though we disagree, some philosophers have moved toward the view that "language" is the unique factor which gives humans the ability to think thoughts, and that language is the only thing that distinguishes us from animals. They suggest that using language, our consciousness assigns the concepts of true and false to the things and events that surround us. Some of them believe that "truth" has no meaning outside the human mind, and, therefore, in a very real sense, that "truth" does not exist as an independent reality.

 

I am not uncomfortable with the idea that in an inanimate universe "truth" may not exist, and therefore there must be an observer for "truth" to have meaning. However I am very uncomfortable with the suggestion that where a permanent observer does exist, "truth" is merely a creation of that observer's consciousness. If we survive the grave, we may well have a perpetual consciousness that can observe and remember the "truths" which surround us. Whether or not a lamp has been observed to be on a table, if the lamp is physically sitting on a table the very existence of permanent observers who could observe the lamp may give independent meaning to the statement that it is "true" that the lamp is on the table, perhaps so, perhaps not. If memories of human events die with each person, then events themselves become little more than transient observations made by the living. Yet if we survive the grave, it would seem that we would have a continuing consciousness that recognizes a real and fundamental difference between that which is "true" and that which is "false". For now, please accept the possibility that some things are either fundamentally "true", or not.

 

If we want to consider in greater detail the possibility of our continued existence after the death of our bodies, we need to be able to make statements we can believe to be true. In our quest to find some meaning in life, we must develop some method of determining "truths" which we can have a fair degree of confidence in. To do so we first need to understand what it means to be able to "prove" something, scientifically or otherwise.

 

Over the centuries the quest for truth has been refined into the process of scientific analysis. A brief summary of what has come to be known as the scientific method is helpful. Scientists observe what they want to study and record properties they believe to be relevant to their research. While some may have preconceived notions of what they will find, others begin the process of experimentation and observation without any idea what, if anything, they will discover. Even though they may believe they will achieve a certain result, scientists who do not approach every experiment with open minds are not scientists at all.

 

After gathering what they consider to be enough information about an object or event, scientists sit back, study the data, and try to combine and organize the information to discover a pattern running through it. They look for a model that not only describes what they currently observe, but that also perfectly matches past observations. The resulting descriptions of the world around them are known as theories or theorems. These in turn can be used to predict what will happen in the future under the same or similar circumstances.

 

Efforts to formulate theorems that describe observations would be in vain if the universe was made up of random events, occurring without reason or order, for then no one could say what will happen next. Of course, that appears not to be the case, as our universe seems to behave in a more or less ordered manner. As we have studied the cosmos in more and more detail, it seems to be true that (what one scientist called his "gut feeling") all physical objects comprised of matter and energy (which may or may not include all aspects of human "consciousness"), from the tiniest atomic particle to the largest system, behave according to some fixed set of laws. These laws can be thought of as if-then statements, which describe what will happen if a certain event occurs. For example, one of the well-known results of the law of gravity is that IF an apple comes loose from the branch of a tree, THEN it will fall to earth.

 

For several reasons I regret using simplistic examples to make a point. Because of their simplistic nature, they tend to lessen the importance of the point being made. They narrow the reader’s focus from the broad, general truth of a statement to a specific, small part of the whole. Simple examples tend to be incredibly inadequate when used to illustrate complex feelings, beliefs, ideas, etc. Some people feel they are being talked down to, or think they already understand what is being said. They risk missing the deep significance that often hides within the example. On the other hand, simple examples can be used to bring a point quickly home, allowing us to bypass a good bit of background discussion and to explore at once concepts which are best understood when drawn rapidly and simultaneously into the mind. The dangers of simplistic examples can only be overcome by the reader who is aware of the shortcomings, and is willing to expand in their mind the examples so that the "profound" will not be misunderstood to be "simple".

 

Back to gravity and the falling apple. The law itself basically states that objects exert a force on each other that attracts them toward one another, the strength of the attraction being related to their masses and the distance between them. The fundamental law of gravity was described by Isaac Newton after he observed that objects that are dropped fall toward earth. By repeating his experiment over and over again, by dropping object after object, Newton gained confidence what he theorized to be true was true, objects attract each other with a strength directly proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them.

 

Each successful test of Newton's theory of gravity made scientists increasingly confident the theorem was correct. Why should repeated successes, i.e. more and more apples falling off trees, increase the confidence of the scientists? Beyond the "common sense" feeling that repeated successes increase confidence in success, is there some "scientific" reason to be optimistic?

 

Enter the world of statistics. Mathematicians have long recognized that the larger the sample that is taken from a group of items, the better able they are to predict what individual items are like in the group. The larger the sample the more confident they can be that a "strange" or uncharacteristic item will not be found. This is true due to the fundamental nature of the mathematics behind statistical inference. It is true no matter what the items being sampled are, so long as the sample is not biased.

 

For example, if you randomly sample 500 apples out of a box containing 100,000 thoroughly mixed apples, and find not a single rotten one, a mathematician can tell you with a great degree of confidence what the chances are that none of the 100,000 apples is rotten. If you sample 1000 apples out of the 100,000, he or she can be more certain. After inspecting 10,000 apples, he or she can be even more certain. If 5 rotten apples are found in a sample of 500, or 45 in a sample of 1000 the mathematician can tell you how many rotten apples you are likely to find among the 100,000 apples. No matter what is in the box, whether it is 100,000 apples, 100,000 pencils, 100,000 transistors, 100,000 anything, so long as the items are uniformly mixed, anyone can tell by drawing a random sample how many of the items in the box are likely to have one or more traits in common (i.e. color, size, shape, etc.). The bigger the sample, the more accurate the prediction and the more confident the predictor. (please see StatSoft Statistics – Electronic TextBook )

 

It should be emphasized that the predictions are accurate not because of the nature of that which is being sampled, but because the mathematical relationship between the number of samples and the number of underlying items being sampled is fixed and predictable. If you draw at random four pencils from a jar containing 100 pencils, three are white, one is red, there is a certain probability that the jar contains 75% white pencils and 25% red pencils. If you draw four golf balls from a jar containing 100 golf balls, three are white, one is red, the same probability exists the jar contains 75% white golf balls and 25% red golf balls.

 

If the apples in our apple barrel were not uniformly mixed, and/or the sample was drawn in some organized pattern, we might get only good apples, or at least a higher number of good apples than we would otherwise. The sample would be unrepresentative of the contents of the box and useless to the mathematician. It is very, very important to realize if we take as our sample 99,999 out of 100,000 apples and find not even a single rotten one, we can be incredibly sure we are right when we predict the one apple left in the box is not rotten. None-the-less when we examine the one remaining apple it may in fact be rotten!!!!! 

 

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