Of Truth and Science

A Take on Subjectivity

Dear Sweet Sara,

How is your smile? Does it still light up your eyes when it strikes, usually suddenly and with terrifying ferocity. Does it light up the room giving that ethereal glow that makes the shadows run? I hope you’ve lit up a room or two today. The rooms deserve it. You do too.

I was thinking of truth. What it is, its nature. Is it relative or absolute? Is it subjective or objective? I think if we have to start somewhere, we have to start by defining it. Some would define truth as a set of accurate facts, and that is true ( pun intended ). However, in relaying this accuracy as facts from one person to another or from knowledge seen, heard or experienced into memory, the truth is touched by a human. This, this act of processing the facts , I argue, renders the truth subjective.

Hmmm, I hear you say, and see you raise a curious eyebrow. Yes, my love. I posit that the very act of absorbing information makes it lose objectivity. Also, any objectivity claimed by a witness to any set of facts will always be tainted with subjectivity, deliberate or otherwise.

This is in fact predicated on the assumption that the witness has actually witnessed the truth in its totality, and is able to absorb the facts accurately. I would argue that if a person has to relay or store information, it would no doubt be coloured by his innate view of the world, no matter how hard the said person tried. I think we can agree on some things. One, that there is an absolute version of facts that define the happening of an event. This is true for every event from the Big Bang to the sneezing of an alley cat. Two, that a human being’s understanding of absolute facts is limited; Three, that information not processed by a first-party has to be relayed, usually by a human being ( or a human-built system — this is all about bias but I’ll save that for another day, love). And four, since the first-party witness may not grasp the full nature of the absolute facts, the facts relayed as truth are therefore not absolute, objective truth, but subjective truth.

Repeat this for millennia, each step adding a little subjectivity. There would need to be some formalization. Some method that allows for pure objectivity by removing the need to relay subjective information. There are only two ways to do that. One, make sure every first-party witness is reliable; An impossible task. Or two, make everyone a first-party witness by allowing everyone to witness the absolute truth. And yes, my sweet, you guessed it: Enter, The Scientific Method.

The Scientific Method insists on repeatability and observability. The Scientific Method, therefore, insists on the truth. By allowing different witnesses to the absolute truth, we allow for as many subjective truths to overlap creating something so close to the absolute truth that while it looks like it, it is not it. It is a fair simulacrum of the original but a copy nonetheless.

I, therefore, put it to you, my ray of sunshine, that science is about the pursuit of truth. And there is no greater calling than that.

I must seek my truth too, subjective though it may be, And I hope you do too.

Till we meet,

Yours, Always,

Lawrence

#Philosophy #Science #Truth