As we all know from experience, the normal answer set on tests is: “True OR False,” but that’s a forced, reductive, set of options. It’s indicative of a culture that insists on categorization and classification and, most importantly, grasps for the certainty of binary options. As we also all know from experience, real life is almost always more complicated than that.
We like to think that some overarching truth is out there and, for a long time in many cultures, religious belief provided that sensibility and comfort. For many people today, it still does. However, for many more, religious beliefs—particularly those around gods, creation, and teleology—have been discarded. Much of that space has since become occupied by science and (to some degree) history, but neither is fully satisfying. Some critics have pointed to this gap as demonstrative of the hollowness of modernity and have attributed all sorts of moral and cultural emptiness/ennui/angst to it. They’re not wrong.
A considerable amount of leading-edge intellectualizing in the late 20C went into ideas of “deconstructionism” or “post-modernism,” emphasizing the artificial nature of these narratives of modernity. In some of my talks about the nature of history, I have joined them, at least to the extent of pointing out that of the quadrillions of historical “facts” out there (e.g. “Henry VIII had six wives,” “Jefferson owned slaves,” “Colin Powell told everyone that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction,’” or even that “Jesus preached”) one can construct multiple themes of connection or narratives and that they reflect the stance and beliefs of the historian overlaid on top of the raw historical facts.
These narratives are not false, but they’re not uniquely true, either. Only a secondary part of their value lies in their “truthiness” (to use Stephen Colbert’s felicitous phrase); their main purpose is to provide us with a means of ordering the world and quieting our existential fear of chaos. For a while, constellations of stars met this purpose; after all, the three stars of Orion’s belt are actually nowhere near each other, they just look that way from where we’re standing).
Scientific narratives/theories are no different. Indeed, the premise of modern science is that we compile a bunch of data and observations and come up with a theory that makes sense, until we stumble across other information which belies that. Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was all about the messy and contingent ways in which those models (narratives) change. So, there’s actually no claim to definitive truth in science, merely “here’s the best story we have so far.”
Even when a new model comes along, it takes a while for folks to come to terms with it; especially for non-scientists and especially when the old theory seems to work well enough. Protestantism wasn’t born in a day. A hundred years after relativity and quantum theory, almost all of us a more than content to live in a Newtonian world which—despite its fundamental inaccuracies—seems to work well enough in our daily lives. As to both history and science, we seem comfortable living in a world which is described falsely (or, at least, not entirely truthfully). [No small part of the current political disconnection in the US and many other places arises from sharp differences about which narrative to use in connecting the raw data of current life.]
Thus, while it is easy to say that we should “stick to the facts,” or live “in the real world,” or exalt the “truth,” no one actually does. I draw two conclusions from this. First, a bit less of the all-too-common “holier-than-thou” attitude towards other’s narratives wouldn’t be a bad thing. Second, in turn, maybe a bit less emphasis on “truthiness” in general would be helpful. Science and History are supposed to be humble and tentative by nature and their adherents should theoretically find this an easier step. However, religion is not the only site of dogma and many such traditions also stress an openness and toleration of other views.
Beyond that general stance, we need to take into account the essential human need for some mode of narrative to cope with the apparent nonsensicality of the universe. The deconstructed science or History may be more accurate depictions of “reality” than our more familiar (“undeconstructed”) narratives, but if we’re unhappy at a personal level and our societies are fracturing as a result, I have to ask if it’s worth it. My college’s motto (Brandeis U. ’76) is: “truth, even unto its innermost parts;” exemplary of the modern, Enlightenment-inspired, mentalité; which is all well-and-good, … eventually. Just as it’s arguable that we need a bit less acceleration of technology, so we may need to slow down our digestion of “truth,” to a socially and psychologically manageable pace. It won’t do our civilization any good to be “right” and extinct.
We like to think that some overarching truth is out there and, for a long time in many cultures, religious belief provided that sensibility and comfort. For many people today, it still does. However, for many more, religious beliefs—particularly those around gods, creation, and teleology—have been discarded. Much of that space has since become occupied by science and (to some degree) history, but neither is fully satisfying. Some critics have pointed to this gap as demonstrative of the hollowness of modernity and have attributed all sorts of moral and cultural emptiness/ennui/angst to it. They’re not wrong.
A considerable amount of leading-edge intellectualizing in the late 20C went into ideas of “deconstructionism” or “post-modernism,” emphasizing the artificial nature of these narratives of modernity. In some of my talks about the nature of history, I have joined them, at least to the extent of pointing out that of the quadrillions of historical “facts” out there (e.g. “Henry VIII had six wives,” “Jefferson owned slaves,” “Colin Powell told everyone that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction,’” or even that “Jesus preached”) one can construct multiple themes of connection or narratives and that they reflect the stance and beliefs of the historian overlaid on top of the raw historical facts.
These narratives are not false, but they’re not uniquely true, either. Only a secondary part of their value lies in their “truthiness” (to use Stephen Colbert’s felicitous phrase); their main purpose is to provide us with a means of ordering the world and quieting our existential fear of chaos. For a while, constellations of stars met this purpose; after all, the three stars of Orion’s belt are actually nowhere near each other, they just look that way from where we’re standing).
Scientific narratives/theories are no different. Indeed, the premise of modern science is that we compile a bunch of data and observations and come up with a theory that makes sense, until we stumble across other information which belies that. Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was all about the messy and contingent ways in which those models (narratives) change. So, there’s actually no claim to definitive truth in science, merely “here’s the best story we have so far.”
Even when a new model comes along, it takes a while for folks to come to terms with it; especially for non-scientists and especially when the old theory seems to work well enough. Protestantism wasn’t born in a day. A hundred years after relativity and quantum theory, almost all of us a more than content to live in a Newtonian world which—despite its fundamental inaccuracies—seems to work well enough in our daily lives. As to both history and science, we seem comfortable living in a world which is described falsely (or, at least, not entirely truthfully). [No small part of the current political disconnection in the US and many other places arises from sharp differences about which narrative to use in connecting the raw data of current life.]
Thus, while it is easy to say that we should “stick to the facts,” or live “in the real world,” or exalt the “truth,” no one actually does. I draw two conclusions from this. First, a bit less of the all-too-common “holier-than-thou” attitude towards other’s narratives wouldn’t be a bad thing. Second, in turn, maybe a bit less emphasis on “truthiness” in general would be helpful. Science and History are supposed to be humble and tentative by nature and their adherents should theoretically find this an easier step. However, religion is not the only site of dogma and many such traditions also stress an openness and toleration of other views.
Beyond that general stance, we need to take into account the essential human need for some mode of narrative to cope with the apparent nonsensicality of the universe. The deconstructed science or History may be more accurate depictions of “reality” than our more familiar (“undeconstructed”) narratives, but if we’re unhappy at a personal level and our societies are fracturing as a result, I have to ask if it’s worth it. My college’s motto (Brandeis U. ’76) is: “truth, even unto its innermost parts;” exemplary of the modern, Enlightenment-inspired, mentalité; which is all well-and-good, … eventually. Just as it’s arguable that we need a bit less acceleration of technology, so we may need to slow down our digestion of “truth,” to a socially and psychologically manageable pace. It won’t do our civilization any good to be “right” and extinct.
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