Marc's+1st+Week+Assignment

__"The Terrible Truth About Truth" Response__

Dr. Terry Halwes argues in this article that science is not a pursuit of truth as it has always been believed to be. It is just the pursuit of knowledge that is ever more useful to us humans as we attempt to understand the laws of the world around us. No one theory is true, because we cannot truly verify that any theory is true. Borrowing the topic of the "Scientific Method" from Halwes's other articles, we see that following those steps does not necessarily make some experiment scientific truth. One scientist may perform an experiment for which he records every minute action taken which is then replicated by other members of the scientific community. Just because this experiment was successfully replicated many times by many people, does not make it a truth.

Within the article, Dr. Halwes discusses //why// such results cannot be considered a truth when he talks about statistical approximation in an example regarding the extinction of dinosaurs: "Our logician knows that inductive evidence can never lead to certainty, but the case is so strong now that no one outside the comic books and science fiction novels suggests that any dinos are still living ("Changing Concepts of Truth in Science"). No matter how many dinosaur fossils are found, none of them seem to be dated back to before a very specific time period, a time we believe all dinosaurs became extinct. While more and more evidence is found to support this idea with the discovery of every new fossil, the logician can never be certain. There may be, buried somewhere under the surface of the Earth, the fossilized bones of a dinosaur which died //after// the date which is commonly believed. This occurrence would shatter the commonly believed "//truth//," and that is exactly what Halwes is trying to say. No matter how much evidence we compile in favor of a certain scientific theory, we can still be wrong, and this has indeed happened before.

Halwes uses a few prime example to point out the fact that theories and speculations once widely believed to be true can suddenly and unexpectedly be proven wrong. Galileo once suggested that the sun was the center of our galaxy, and that the Earth revolved around it. When not enough evidence was provided to disprove the common belief of Copernicus's heliocentrism, Galileo was forced to recant and shamed. Later, though, it was proven that the sun was indeed the center of "the universe" and that the Earth revolved around it. And it was much later until we accepted that our sun and our galaxy is not the center of the universe. Scientists believed as late as the 19th century that the time tested laws of Newton in addition with the recently formulated laws of electromagnetism were the farthest extents and most undeniable truths of physics and that no further advances could be made. This idea was demolished when Einstein proposed his theories of relativity. Imagine a huge chalkboard filled with lifetimes worth of work being suddenly erased so as to start with a "clean slate." Halwes highlights these breakthroughs as proof that science will likely never reach an absolute truth.

Halwes suggests that we should "just give up the pre-scientific notion that principles are valuable only if they are true for certain ("In Conclusion: Knowledge About Truth")". Halwes believes that science should be a pursuit of as much knowledge as can be attained, with no worry about which theory is absolutely true. This is a brilliant suggestion and while he is right that no theory may be absolutely proven, despite ideas which we have accepted for centuries as //laws// of science, the goal of attaining a perfect understanding should not be abandoned.

There is nothing wrong with being proven wrong, as some theorists have been before and as Halwes earlier highlighted, because it makes way for new ideas to be more extensively tested and possibly accepted as "truth." That is, until it may be disproven by a newer theory. The pursuit of a definitive truth adds a competitive edge to science, and that is why it should be perhaps maintained. Halwes is right when he says that the compilation of knowledge and understanding becomes ever more useful. The hope for someday attaining an absolute truth and a complete understanding of ourselves, our planet, our universe and everything, however, is what keeps science advancing, and that is the oversight in Halwes's final statements.