3 - 10 Feb 2008

How do we know what is true? For example: how do we know our lover really loves us? How do we know whether our view of the world is correct (whether it includes a God or not)? Can we be sure of anything? The idea that truth could be discovered by reason alone probably came from the Enlightenment period in the 17th Century. Yet one mathematician wrote:

"We know the truth not only by reasoning, but also by means of the heart, and it is in the latter way that we know first principles … the heart has its reasons of which reason does not know."

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662, mathematician and philosopher; from 'Pensée', Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1973, p90, 92).

Further Thoughts
Another more recent mathematician and philosopher, C S Pierce, argued that, scientific truths can rarely be discovered simply by logic and reasoning:

"When a man desires ardently to know the truth, his first effort will be to imagine what that truth can be [but]...imagination unbridled is sure to carry him off the track. Yet nevertheless, it remains true that there is, after all, nothing but imagination that can ever supply him an inkling of the truth. He can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way."

C S Peirce (1839-1914, mathematician, philosopher and chemist; from "The Scientific Imagination", The Collected Papers Vol. I: Principles of Philosophy).

Unless our beliefs in what we hold to be true, whether scientific, social, religious or personal, are open to criticism and contradiction, we may continue to delude ourselves. Another philosopher, Karl Popper, famously showed that we can never prove anything to be true; all we know is when a theory or idea fails. He also wrote:

"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."

Karl Popper (1902-1994, philosopher; from 'Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach').

C S Peirce and Karl Popper were writing about scientific knowledge. How much can we apply what they say to other areas of knowedge, such as beliefs in a world-veiw or religion?