Truth, error and faith. Any idea, no matter how far-fetched, contains some objective
content. Then are mermaids, witches and devils images of truth? The
metaphysically-minded materialists, who interpret reflection one-sidedly, deny
that there is any reflection of reality in error. Religious conscious ness, for
example, is regarded as completely void of any objective content. But the
history of humanity's search for knowledge shows that error does reflect,
admittedly one sidedly, objective reality, that it has its
source in reality,
has an "earthly" foundation. There is not and cannot be any absolute
error which reflects absolutely nothing. Even the delirium of the insane is a
reflection of something. In all the above cases there are threads of objective
reality, woven into fantastic patterns by the force of imagination. Taken in
their entirety, these images do not add up to something true. Far from every
phenomenon of consciousness possesses the same degree of veracity. But
humankind lives and progresses not because its consciousness is cluttered with
error, blind faith and falsehood, but because that consciousness also contains
true knowledge. If cognition had not been, from the very beginning, a more or
less accurate reflection of reality, man would never have been able to
transform his environment creatively or even to adapt himself to it. The very
fact of man's existence, the history of science and practice prove the truth of
this assertion. This is not to say, of course, that human knowledge is not
prone to error. In acquiring the ability to think abstractly and imagine
productively, which has taken us far beyond the confines of what is given by
the senses, people have earned the privilege of making mistakes and being
carried away by all kinds of nonsense.
Animals are incapable of abstract thought but they do not make the
same mistakes as man, who has evolved a whole world of fantastic, fairy-tale
images, unbelievably bizzare, gorgeously beautiful or hideously grotesque.
Error is an idea or a combination of ideas and images that arise in
the mind of the individual or society and do not correspond to reality but are
regarded as true. This definition of error follows logically from that of cognition
as the reflection of reality. Error is honest untruth. Unlike error, falsehood
or deception is dishonest untruth. A person knows that a certain idea is untrue
but for some reason or other he presents it as true. The person who makes a
mistake leads others into error because he himself has erred. The liar, on the
other hand, while deceiving others, is not himself deceived. Falsehood speaks
of something that exists as non-existent and of the non-existent as existing.
But truth has a force that the lie lacks: the latter is usually exposed in the
long run. Someone has said that a lie is rather like spitting against the wind;
the spit is bound to fly in the liar's face. Error should be distinguished from
the mistake that is the result of incorrect practical or mental activiity,
evoked by purely accidental, personal causes. It is commonly believed that
errors are annoying accidents. But they have relentlessly pursued knowledge
throughout history, they are a kind of penalty that humanity has to pay for its
daring attempts to know more than is permitted by the level of practice and the
scope of theoretical thought. The ancients saw the source of error either in
the natural imperfection of our cognitive abilities, in the limitations of
sensuous and rational knowledge, in lack of education, or a combination of all
these factors.
The philosophy of modern times sometimes regards error as the
distorting influence of emotion or will on human reason. Error is rooted in the
social conditions of man's existence and in the nature of his mind, which may
be compared to a mirror with an uneven surface that mingles its own
imperfection with the image of the thing reflected. Thinkers have seen the
source of error in free will and insufficient knowledge. According to Kant, the
source of error lies in the fundamentally unjustifiable emergence of human
consciousness beyond the bounds of possible personal experience in·to the
objective world for itself, or in violation of the logical rules of thought.
Error is a historically conditioned, and therefore constantly
overcome, discrepancy between knowledge and the object of knowledge. It
expresses theoretically the limitedness of people's actual power over nature
and their own relations, and results from the constant urge to overcome the limitations
of existing knowledge and practice. Truth is a complex, contradictory process
in which error is constantly overcome through the development of knowledge,
while truth itself becomes increasingly complete and profound. People
themselves are to blame for their errors, although the latter are by no means
an inherent, immanent feature of human nature, but only a transient possibility
realised on the basis of certain historical conditions.
By its very nature scientific cognition is impossible without a
clash of different views, a struggle of beliefs, without discussion; it is
therefore impossible without error. Only those who do nothing or who constantly
repeat platitudes make no mistakes. Numerous opinions may be advanced on a
certain question and quite often not one of them is correct. Every scientific
discovery usually entails numerous errors, which are stages in the development
of truth, as illustrated by the common expression "learning from one's
mistakes". If the doors are locked to error, truth cannot enter the mind
either. This is not to say, however, that one should look pessimistically on
cognition as an endless groping among figments of the imagination. Errors are
removed or gradually overcome, and truth, though sometimes badly wounded, fights
its way through to the light. "One may have the desire not to burden
oneself with the negative as something false, one may demand to be brought at
once to the truth. Why should one become involved with what is false?... This
notion is one of the biggest obstacles to truth.... Truth is not a stamped coin
which can be supplied ready-made...."[1]
How many cases have there been in science when under certain
conditions error proved to be truth and truth error! Even legends and
fairy-tales come true in the course of time. For example, when the ancients
began to describe atoms they made a tremendous discovery and at the same time
became victims of error. They called particles of matter atoms because they
considered them to be indivisible. They were right and wrong at the same time.
Humanity has achieved its present level of culture not because of error but
despite it. Attainment of truth is the prime task of science.
Truth is the true reflection of reality in the consciousness, the
reflection of reality as it exists for itself, independently of the will and
consciousness of people.
Closely connected with truth and error is the concept of faith,
which ordinary consciousness often associates with the meaning it has been
given in religion. In the broad philosophic al sense faith should be understood
as an individual's profound conviction of the correctness of his actions,
thoughts or ideals. And this conviction may have a generic or a derivative
character. As something generic, faith may be just blind everyday superstition
or it may simply be a confidence in science, scientists and so on. As something
derivative, faith is scientifically grounded, authentic knowledge and in this
sense it is based on truth. Faith may be true, but this principle is not
reversible.
The concept of truth is linked with the moral concepts of honesty
and sincerity. Truth is the aim of science and honesty is the ideal of moral
motivation. Fruitful studies in science and philosophy are impossible where
fear of the consequences of thinking is stronger than the love of truth. Truth
is authenticated knowledge and knowledge is strength, the greatest strength of
all. It cannot be destroyed by prisons, penal servitude, the gallows, the
guillotine, or the stake. The burning bush of truth will never burn out.
Giordano Bruno died at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome as a martyr to
scientific truth. His body perished in the flames but truth remained, it was
indestructible. Although the great majority, misled by all kinds of false
arguments, may be against it, truth is bound sooner or later to win through. An
ardent and selfless love of truth is often to be found in individuals who are
richly endowed morally as well as intellectually.
The objective content of true knowledge. All
truth is objective: its content does not depend on the subject, his intentions
or will. A correct answer to the question, "What is truth?"
presupposes recognition of the fact that outside our consciousness there exists
an infinite world developing according to objective laws. Truth is the accurate
reflection of the object in the consciousness of the subject. Authenticity is
the mode of existence of truth.
Since it is the correct reflection of the object, truth always has
objective content. If we conceive ideas that have no correspondence in reality,
it is clear that these concepts have nothing to do with truth and cannot
therefore stand up to the test of practice.
Any truth is objective. There is no such thing as unobjective truth.
Subjective truth is merely an individual's opinion. So the definition that we
have given of truth is at the same time a definition of objective truth. Truth
is not reality itself but the objective content of the results of cognition.
Its content does not depend on the will, desire, passion or imagination of
human beings. Only objective knowledge corresponding to the essence of things
themselves allows the individual and society to control natural and social
processes; one can control the forces of nature and society only by obeying
their objective laws.
Can there be several true statements about one and the same
phenomenon in one and the same relation? There may be many opinions but there
can be only one truth!
Truth as a process. The relativity of truth. The principle of
correspondence. The statement that the world is knowable does not mean that an
object is revealed to the subject, the knower, at once in all its attributes
and relations. Our life is not a placid existence in the lap of truth but a
restless and constant search for its acquisition. Science is not a stockpile of
ready-made and all-embracing verities but a process of finding them, of moving
from limited, approximate knowledge to knowledge that becomes ever more
embracing, profound and precise. This process has no limit. The ideas of finite
and immutable truth are illusions that have nothing to do with true science.
The mental vision of the scientist is always an incomplete picture. Some things
are well known and have become trivial, others are not quite comprehensible,
others doubtful, others insufficiently proven, others contradict new facts, and
others are entirely problematic.
When we try to understand a certain object, we have to reckon with
its inexhaustibility and tendency to change. Every object has a vast number of
properties and enters into countless relations with other objects. It would
take a very long time to know these properties and relations. In the history of
science we find many cases when scientists agreed that all the properties of an
object had been established, only to discover later that it had other
properties besides. Water, for instance, was considered to have been studied
inside out. But science then discovered something called "heavy
water", with properties hitherto unsuspected. Recent research has shown
that a number of the peculiarities and states of water depend on the influence
of outer space. And the problem of the distribution, role and specific
properties of water in the universe still awaits a satisfactory solution.
As proven knowledge increases, the circle of probable knowledge also
expands. We are still able to grasp only a little of the boundless
mystery-story of existence.
Truth is relative inasmuch as it reflects an object not exhaustively
but within certain limits, certain relations, which are constantly changing.
Relative truth is limited true know ledge about something.
Scientific knowledge, even the most authentic and precise, is relative
in character. The relativity of knowledge lies in its inevitable incompleteness
and probabilistic nature. For example, our knowledge of the atom, molecule,
electron, living cell, organism, man himself, no matter how profound, is only
partial, it gives an incomplete reflection of the properties and essence of
these objects. Truth is historical. In this sense it is a child of the epoch.
It is in the nature of truth that it breaks through when its time comes.
The people of every epoch cherish the illusion that at long last,
thanks to the strenuous efforts of previous generations and their
contemporaries the promised land of truth has been achieved and thought has
reached a peak beyond which it can climb no further. But time passes and they
find that this was not the summit but only a small hillock, which is often
either trampled down or at best used as a base for further, endless ascent. The
mountain of knowledge has no summit. Each subsequent theory is more complete
and profound than its predecessor. Moreover, new scientific truths do not throw
"old" truths on the scrapheap of history, but supplement them,
concretise them or embrace them as necessary elements in more general and
profound verities. The whole rational content of previous theory becomes part
of the new theory that succeeds it. Science throws out only the claim that it
was exhaustive. Previous theory is interpreted in the new theory as relative
truth and thus as a specific case of a fuller and more accurate theory
(Newton's classical mechanics, for example, and Einstein's theory of
relativity). Such a relation ship between theories in their historical
development is known in science as the correspondence principle, according to
which theories whose correctness for one or another sphere of phenomena has
been tested by practice, by experiment are not dismissed as false upon the
appearance of new, more general theories, but retain their significance for the
previous sphere, as a particular case of the new theory. This principle rests
on the fact that relative truth is objective truth. When speaking of the
relative character of truth, one must bear in mind that this refers to truths
in the sphere of scientific theory and not to the empirical stating of facts.
Our knowledge of empirical facts may be true or untrue. But it cannot be
relatively true. A court of law, for example, has no right to punish a person
unless the case is completely proved against him. No judge has a right to say:
"The accused may or may not have committed a crime, but let's punish him
just in case."
The absolute in truth. By absolute truth one means exhaustive, maximum knowledge of the
world as a whole, full realisation of all the potentials of human reason, the
achievement of frontiers beyond which there is nothing worth knowing. Is this
possible? In principle, yes. In reality the process of cognition is carried on
by succeeding generations, who think very restrictedly and only in terms of the
given level of development of their culture. Absolute knowledge is therefore
only an aim for which science strives and to which the road is endless.
Complete knowledge does not exist; we can only approach it, as we do to the
speed of light.
The development of science is a series of consecutive approximations
to absolute truth, of which each is more precise than its predecessor.
Absolute truths are those which, having been once stated with
complete clarity and authenticity, do not encounter any further
counter-arguments. In this sense an absolute truth is a reflection of a thing
that remains true under all conditions of its existence. Such absolute truths
are represented in science by such statements as "Nothing in the universe
is created out of nothing and nothing disappears without a trace" or
"The Earth revolves around the Sun". These are old truths and general
ones, but they have not ceased to be true. Fully authenticated facts, the dates
of events, of births and deaths and the like, are also ranked as absolute
truth. But these truths are ordinary trivial statements.
The term "absolute" is also used of any relative truth in
the sense that if it is objective it must contain something absolute as one of
its elements. Absolute truth is a piece of knowledge that is not refuted by the
subsequent development of science but enriched and constantly reaffirmed by
life.
Humanity seeks full knowledge of the world. And although it will
never attain such knowledge, it is constantly approach ing it and every step in
that direction, although relative, contains something absolute. Taken as a
whole, our knowledge of nature and the history of society is not complete, but
it contains many grains of the absolute. The development of any truth is an
accumulation of moments of the absolute.
Science commands not only absolute truths but also and to a greater
degree, relative truths. The absolute is the sum-total of relative moments in
truth. Every stage in the development of science adds further grains of truth
to this total.
It may be said that any truth is both absolute and relative. In
human knowledge taken as a whole the specific gravity of the absolute in truth
is constantly increasing.
The concreteness of truth. One of the
basic principles of the dialectical approach to knowledge is recognition of the
concreteness of truth. Recognition of this principle means approaching truth
not abstractly but in connection with real conditions. The concreteness of
truth means that we must pinpoint the decisive concrete historical conditions
in which the object of cognition exists and identify the essential properties,
relations and basic tendencies of its development. Concreteness is the real
connection and interaction of all aspects of the object, knowledge of it in all
the wealth of its interactions. A statement about an object is true if it
exactly reflects the object in the stated conditions; different conditions
require a different statement. A true reflection of one moment of reality may
become false if it is divorced from its context, from certain conditions of
place, time and its role in the composition of the whole. For example, a
physical organ cannot be comprehended without an understanding of the organism,
an individual cannot be comprehended without understanding of society, and a
historically concrete society at that, and outside the context of his specific
biography. The statement "water boils at 1000 C,, is true if we are
speaking of ordinary water at normal pressure. It is not true if we are
referring to "heavy water" or if we change the pressure.
Every object has general features and also its specific qualities,
its unique "context of life". So besides a general approach, one must
also have a concrete approach to an object in accordance with the principle:
truth is never abstract, always concrete. Are the principles of classical
mechanics true, for example? Yes, they are, if applied to macrobodies and to
relatively low velocities.
For one and the same process truth cannot be eternal, given once and
for all. The process itself develops, the conditions in which it proceeds
change, and the truth that reflects it undergoes modifications. What was truth
in certain conditions may become untrue in others.
Since every given truth is incomplete, it is quite justifiable to
ask about any theory or idea: to what degree of accuracy does it reflect the
object? Because of this incompleteness the application of any given truth is
limited. And if one takes any truth "too far", extends it beyond its
frame of reference, it can be reduced to absurdity.
The principle of the concreteness of truth means that we must
approach facts not with general formulas and schemata, but with maximum
consideration of the decisive conditions, and this is totally incompatible with
dogmatism.
The criteria of truth. What guarantee have we of any truth in our knowledge? What forms the
basis for distinguishing truth from error, from lies and mistakes? In other
words, what are the criteria of true knowledge?
Descartes and Spinoza, for example, proposed clear and distinct
apprehension as the criterion of truth. Clarity was what was perceptible by the
observing reason. Only that which could be clearly apprehended and gave rise to
no doubts could be considered true. Descartes' examples of such truths were
mathematical statements such as "a square has four sides". Such
truths have a distinctness that rules out all doubts. They are the result of
the "natural light of reason". Just as light reveals both itself and
the surrounding darkness, so is truth the measure of itself and of falsity.
Leibnitz defined the truth of an idea as its clarity based on the clarity of
all its elements. This view of the criteria of truth was historically
progressive. It gave precedence to the power of human reason. But it did not
take into consideration the fact that clarity itself also requires criteria.
The mere fact of obviousness does not guarantee truth. History has severely
judged many clear and obvious "truths". What was quite clear to
science yesterday, today becomes incomprehensible. What, it once seemed, could
be more clear and obvious than the immobility of the earth? And many regarded
this as an obvious truth and believed in it fanatically.
The Conventionalists saw the foundation of truth in any fact that
had been conventionally agreed upon between groups of scientists, capable of
judging what should be considered true or false. Other thinkers advanced the
principle of universal significance: what corresponded to the opinion of the
majority was true. But long before this Democritus had said that questions of
truth could not be decided by a majority vote. History abounds in cases where
only one person was in possession of true knowledge in a certain field while
all the rest were mistaken. We have only to recall Copernicus and his
discovery, which no one else was prepared to believe.
The pragmatists maintain that truth is anything that justifies
itself in practice, that helps to achieve the required aim. True ideas are
those that "work", that are useful.
The fundamental principle of scientific thinking lies in the
following: a proposition is true if one can prove that it applies in certain
specific conditions, or if there is an acknowledged precedent for its having
been so applied. This principle may be termed the principle of
"realisability". Through the realisation of an idea in practical
action knowledge is measured against, compared with, its object and reveals the
actual degree of its objectivity, the truth of its content. The veracity of a
principle can be proved only by its successful practical application. Any
proposition which is directly or indirectly confirmed in practice, or which may
be effectively realised in practice, is correct. If a person compares his
concept of things with other concepts that have been practically tested, he
thereby indirectly, through this correct image, compares his own concept with
the object itself. Correspondence between a concept and its object is fully
proved only when one can find, reproduce or create such an object,
corresponding to the concept that one has formed. The truth of a theory is the
necessary guarantee of its realisability. For example, the practice of
launching artificial earth satellites confirmed the correctness of the
theoretical propositions and calculations on the basis of which these
satellites were built.
The criterion of practice cannot fully confirm or refute any notion
completely. It is flexible enough to guard us against treating knowledge as an
ossified truth that needs no development. At the same time it is sound enough
to allow us to argue successfully against the varieties of agnosticism.
"The atom is indivisible." Is this true or false? For many
centuries it was considered true and practice sanctioned it. In those days the
atom was indeed indivisible, just as today it is practically divisible and
elementary particles are as yet indivisible. Such is the level of contemporary
practice. Practice is a "cunning" creature. It not only confirms
truth and exposes error, it also keeps quiet about what is beyond its frame of
reference.
Practice has many different facets and various levels of
development, beginning from empirical experience and ending with rigorous
scientific experiment. It is one thing to consider the practice of primitive
man obtaining fire by means of friction. And quite another, the practice of the
medieval alchemist trying to find the philosopher's stone that would change
base metals into gold. Modern space flights, physical experiments with
equipment of tremendous resolving power, computer calculations and heart
surgery, the liberation movements of peoples, these are also practice.
Some theoretical propositions may be directly confirmed and put into
practice (for example, the geologists' assumption that there is uranium ore in
a certain place at a certain depth). Others have to be practically confirmed by
extremely circuitous ways, involving long or short intermediate links, through
other sciences, through the applied fields of know ledge, through the
revolutionary action of the masses, whose effect may show only years later.
This is how certain mathematical ideas, the propositions of theoretical
physics, biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, history, aesthetic theory,
and so on, take effect. Everything that is truly scientific must inevitably,
directly or indirectly, sooner or later, be realised in
By Alexander Spirkin
