How can we tell what is "true" when we are limited by our human concepts of what is "real"? When I read 'Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godelz' by Rebecca Goldstein it radically reshaped how I approach truth. When I was younger, I came to settle on the fact that math was the only universal truth, other than what is "true" to you individually. This was radically changed when I started to learn more about what Kurt Godel was offering in his "incompleteness theory". He basically started with being obsessed by proving that there are limits to how we approach math and how it can cannot be proven within its confines. His theorem was so advanced, it was considered brilliant by his good friend and walking partner Einstein. How would you know your limitations when you are confined to our very small understanding of the universe through our "human view"? That is to say, how can one tell their view is biased when it is formulated by a series of things you learned throughout your life. Your view is formed by your experiences, understanding and perception of reality. How can you come up with a truly unique point of view or idea, when it is always based on how humans perceive the universe, or our very small planet, or country, or spoon fed ideology. Therefore our version of truth will always be interpreted through the lens of the human experience. It would almost be impossible to describe a concept which does not exist on our planet. Even the concept of a black hole is described by very human examples of what we know. Einstein was so unique, or perceived to be unique because he brought together several advanced concepts of his time together in a very unique way to create his 2 great theories of general and special theories of relativity. He always said "I stand on the shoulders of giants", because his ideas where out there in the world of science, but not brought together the way he did by integrating time as a dimension. I would argue, that his theory was not entirely unique and limited by our understanding of mathematics and logic. Godel eventually died because he starved himself to death because he believed he was being poisoned. This is a topic I will cover in other entries, which is how do you know you are crazy if you are locked in your own mind? Or how do you know what an evolved human looks like if it is completely outside of our understanding of what is reality? In the movie '2001 Space odyssey' the character "moon watcher" was evolving into a modern human, but no one around him understood what was happening to him. The monolith seemed to be a large black rectangle to us, but could be something far greater to the evolved human. Amazing link to a Richard Dawkins lecture... click here
3 comments:
The common definition of insanity, which Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama is using to perfection as a way to discredit his opponents, is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." But, in some circles, insanity is also defined as "the inability to see the truth." However, you do raise a good point: How can we, in our limited understanding of the world, actually know what the truth is? Unless you're legendary boxer Carl "The Truth" Williams or Col. Nathan Jessup in "A Few Good Men" it's almost impossible to 'truly' know. This is why cleverly devised reality programs like "Moment of Truth" are doomed from the start. That and their utter and complete stupidity.
That said, I had a Greek pizza for dinner. It was good. And that's the truth.
great point CIALIS. We must have mutually agreed upon and personal truths in order to navigate our reality. It puts us to bed at night knowing or BELIEVING certain truths. My next question is then, have we created these truths for any period of time which is not true when you change the variable of time? That is to say, that our version of reality is so fundamentally different than to those which lived in 5,000 BC. Is time a variable in this equation?
Time IS a variable in this equation because as the great philosopher, Steve Miller, once said, "Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future." If you believe now, as people once did, that homosexuality will bring about massive hurricanes and flooding, wiping out entire cities, than you would be thought of as insane by today's standards. Unless you are Pat Robertson.
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