The Truth is one, wise call it by different names
It’s been a few years since I heard this Sanskrit verse ‘Ekam Sat Vipra Bahuda Vadanti’ and ever since then I’ve wondered what is truth? Is there a truth? Is it something to be discovered or something to believe or something you become. In the few years post that, I’ve found many versions of the same principles, but never have my experiments led me to the conclusion that there is no truth or that it is something a group of people believe in because that by definition is a belief, not truth.
When I knew a little better than I know today my understanding of evolution was something like this, ‘we evolved from apes’. That’s it. At some point I wanted to pursue the truth of evolution, and that led me to the understanding that life emerged in water bodies, moved from single cell organisms to multicellular organisms, ultimately moving to the land and eventually mammals evolved out of it. But that was nowhere near the truth, when I moved a little further, I got to know that there is something called as gene, and that genes are selfish. So anything made of genes will also be selfish even if at surface it looks altruistic. The more I moved near the truth I felt I knew even less. But, now when I came upon the fact that every gene survives on it’s ability to replicate, and it’s survival has nothing to do with any purpose that serves the species but only in it’s ability to replicate better than the other genes. The selfishness of a gene comes at a genetic level where they keep the hosts alive and fit in order to replicate at a rate greater than rival genes. That understanding has led me closer to the truth the most, but nonetheless I feel I know less than when I started out. I think Darwin or Dawkins would’ve had the similar revelation because it is their findings which built this knowledge on the basis on which I could move close to the truth of evolution. But what if I had relied on a mere belief rather the searching for truth? I would have probably been in all knowing state, arrogant and of an archaic belief of some kind. For example, one day the first men just appeared out of nowhere and started reproducing and that’s how we came into being. That belief in and of itself would stop me from pursuing knowledge further, moving me away from the truth. So, pursuing truth humbles you, on the contrary believing that truth is what I believe in leads to an all-knowing arrogant state which restrains creation of knowledge.
When anybody reads philosophy, one finds out that ever since the dawn of humanity there have been problems human beings have been trying to solve. While we solve one problem other problems emerge at the same time within the solution of the previous problem and then we solve those problems and it continues, that’s how we move forward. When it comes to dealing with human nature, there seem to be similar problems which have been consistent throughout the human history. We no longer wonder whether earth is flat or why seasons change, because we have good explanations for that, but we do contemplate on problems specific to human conscious such as acceptance of death. In a period of thousands of years there have been great individuals who’ve tried to address these issues through thinking, observing and reflecting whether through writing or oral transmission. There hasn’t been a single conclusion that has been reached to the problems of human life. So, can we say that there is no truth to human life? Absolutely not, for example things stuck to the ground, we never thought of the reason behind it unless Newton did and found the truth of Gravity. Similarly, we now know what causes death, what causes the decay of human body, what causes old age but we’re yet to discover why we die. Perhaps, the truth of death itself is the fact that you’ve to find it for yourself. But, these issues, the problems of human nature do not limit the creation of knowledge or in other words pursuit of universal truths. The problem starts when we start to assume that the nature of human problems and the nature itself is similar, and the way we approach the reality should also be the same. This gives rise to the misconception of a non-existing objective reality. If you’re wondering if that is true or not, contemplate on whether any significant discovery has ever come out of the assumption that there is no objective truth.
When we look at every religion, they stress the importance of God being the truth. But that being said, the idea of God is reached through a belief of various individuals. A person living in the American continent might have a completely different idea about God than a person sitting in the Asian continent. But there was a time when people of these continents were not interacting with each other. There was no possible way through which they could communicate. During these time the people living in every continent, individually came up with the idea of God, maybe it was something they say as a being who’s all powerful and all good. Maybe they wanted to create an ideal everybody aspired to be. Maybe they wanted to set in place their morals and the consequence of not adhering to the morals would be judged by an all-powerful being. It could be either of the things but a common theme across all cultures is that God is something which is closer to something which is good, an ideal, someone who anyone can aspire to be. There is some truth to it as even though miles apart, living under extremely different conditions, every culture came up with the same idea and that idea stood the test of time. We can say that seeking truth is an individual journey, when we rely on a group for the truth it becomes a mere belief. A belief can be easily refuted and there are always those who don’t believe in a particular belief and that’s how we know that it is not the truth. God is the truth, or at least there is some truth to it as reaching the highest good which is very close to what God has been seen in every culture, in individuals who are part of that culture, irrespective of their circumstances or location. So maybe religion with its aspect of pursuit of truth is closer to the truth than modern day relativist (relativism is the misconception that there is no objective truth).
Then is the pursuit merely seeking truth or is there anything else to that. I think whenever we set out to seek the truth, we have to assume that there is a truth. Science has given us by far the best examples of why this assumption always works. Thomas Edison had to assume that there is a truth to creating a light bulb which will illuminate the whole world, and that truth came into being. Similarly, someone went with an assumption that there could be truth to nuclear fission, pursued that truth and nuclear energy came into being. On the contrary if we are to assume that there is no truth, how would human beings even move forward? Any significant discovery ever made in human history came into being through seeking the truth, and while there are infinite truths to be found in the universe, the ones we have found are the best examples of our advancements in human civilization and at the root of it is the pursuit of truth. As famously said by John Archibald Wheeler, “Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful that when we grasp it — in a decade, a century or a millennium — we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise?” And that is the exciting part about the pursuit of truth.
That brings me to my argument against the notion that truth is fluid. That there is no right and wrong. Suppose there was a world where everyone was to have liberty to decide whatever is true to them to such an extent that one could choose whether law of gravity works for them, or if speed of sound is greater than speed of light, or if they are not made of matter. If we were living in a world like that, there would once be a guy called Newton who would give laws of gravity, and then the coming generations would refuse to believe in that because one can choose whether to believe in a belief or not. Only the truth can be falsified through experimentation and better explanations. In a world like that we would never be able to build upon the knowledge that Newton created, because that would be considered a mere belief that newton had, it is not truth or even knowledge. Even if there were individuals who believed in Newton’s laws they would run with the assumption of a belief and not truth and then they would be easily refuted through mere words and not with facts, evidence and better explanations. They would never think of gravitational laws having the potential to create the knowledge to go into outer space. They would not use these laws to define precision of the universe. The reason being that the knowledge is created by the pursuit of truth, and if truth were to be fluid i.e. if every truth were to be a belief, then there would be no need for seeking because one can hold a belief without having to prove it. On the contrary a truth is what needs seeking and creation of knowledge to come up with a good explanation that explains how the truth holds true for everyone and everything, and if you were to be in your own pursuit of truth which is better applicable and explains the reality better, well then it falsifies the prior best explanation. But a truth is very difficult to vary, even if the circumstances change. So, chances of a truth being falsified is much less, but it is possible, as we always are building up on our past knowledge to create better explanations. This is not possible when things are mere beliefs.
In conclusion, remember that if you go with the assumption that truth is fluid, you’ll always search for consensus, always be stuck in the mere belief system. Seek the truth and you’ll always be near the creation of knowledge, near the truth itself and maybe reach there if you are one of the greats. As David Deutsch puts it, it is “The Beginning of Infinity”.
