•  McCarthy, David. 2001. Why sex selection should be legal.  Journal of Medical Ethics 27(5):302

What is Truth

Quotes  |  Class ideas from discussion  |  Dr. Kistler's Ideas  |  Further references

Noteworthy Hits:

Truth: digital deception, spin, science-religion

Science: Science, Values, and the Value of Science.    public perception of science

Technology: Postscript: what about technology?   Looking to the next decade:

Perry's perceptions of changing perception - learning truth?

A collection of quotes on truth

"The truth." Dumbledore sighed. "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.

           J. K. Rowling (1997)

What would their results have looked like? Ninety-eight percent chance of brown hair? Seventy- five percent chance of gray eyes?
Nowhere on that form was an area for percentage chance of bringing Joy. Nowhere was there a space for all the years of laughter, now denied.
She has choices of her own to make. All of them involving risk. All of them involving a world that has changed even beyond her understanding.
This morning she thought it irresponsible to have a child without knowing the risks. But she hadn't known the greatest risk of all. The risk of believing the statistics, reading too much into the numbers.
Perfection is not possible.

          Rusch, Kristine Kathryn 2000. Results. Asimov's Science Fiction 24(3):35-40

What we don't know isn't the problem. It is what we do with what we do know.

(From the Sunday sermon at Presbyterian Church of the Way 9/21/03- Gene Orr - credited to someone famous I am sure

Valentine: It may all prove true.

Hannah: It can't prove to be true, it can only not prove to be false yet.

Valentine: Just like science

      Arcadia - a play by Tom Stoppard

Truth has no place in science.

    Del Ratzsch, Science & Its Limits (note context)

Education is a series of lies, and every time you go up a level, the lies become a little less untrue.

     Holly Chrisman, Bethel College, BIO311, Fall 1992

The task of the university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought, and civilized modes of appreciation, can affect the issue.

    Alfred North Whitehead

I am the way , and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.

Jesus, John 14:6 (other truth scriptures)

The twenty-first centry will be regarded by future historians as a century in which religion replaced ideology as the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs.

       Jenkins, P. 2002. The Next Christianity. The Atlantic Monthly. 290(3):53-68.

Your ideas in discussion/formation

Class Discussion from 9/22/03
What is truth?
True = ? God’s existence (but to an atheist) 2+2=4, yellow doesn’t = blue, is true relative, can language define truth
Universally true
Zeitgeist true
Future true may be different from current true because “knowledge” changes/increases
MS word is not truth
True vs Truth
Does an ultimate definition of truth matter or just an individual definition of truth.
Truth has a “perceptual” component or a “consensual” component
There is a God (in a Christian World View)
The bible is “revealed” truth.
Assumptions
Facts
Time may influence truth (contextual)
To be human is to hinge our lives on some context that we define as truth.
Faith is involved in truth because of the perceptual basis of truth.
“ Truth of convenience” = the assumptions that form our living but are relatively unimportant in the discussion of truth.
Truth may be an outcome of common language (back to worldview)
precision in language helps to delineate truth.

Dr. Kistler's thought's on truth - thus the truth.

Katz (2002) feels that one of the last bastions of truth, the university, is no longer leading the way in seeking to understand truth or in teaching students to think about larger truths. He quotes Alfred North Whitehead remarking, "The task of the university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought, and civilized modes of appreciation, can affect the issue." He goes on to point out that although there has been a tremendous explosion of knowledge in the last half century, the knowledge has been "fractionalized", or created in greater and greater numbers of smaller and smaller fields of specialization, at the expense of the creation of "immediately useful knowledge". At the same time, the increasing dominance of what Katz calls "identity politics" has limited the real discussion of societal issues. Katz concludes that the modern university is contributing more, via the "hyper-professionalization of knowledge" to "information" than to what Whitehead thought of as 'rational thought'."

I think the data that we see from the searches above supports many of Katz's contentions. Scientists and colleges and universities, and of course you students trying to learn in them so that you can go out into the world and do something (What purposes we have might also influence this whole worldview picture that is emerging.), are creating and teaching so much about so little, that the general critical thinking skills that are the roots of a rational life and lifestyle are not being taught or practiced.

Another example of Katz's idea of "identity politics" driving the definition of truth is described by Jenkins (2002). "The twenty-first century will be regarded by future historians as a century in which religion replaced ideology as the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs." He sees this trend mainly due to a demographic shift in religious culture and population centers resulting in over 50% of Christians being located in southern (Africa and Latin America) cultures with a more conservative and "anti-intellectual" fundamentalist bent. One example is the growing Pentecostal churches of Africa, who center on "direct spiritual revelation to supplement or replace biblical authority". And while we do not want to say that Pentecostals are wrong, the growing or "booming" as Jenkins says, of these movements help us to understand something about "truth" in modern society as religious fervor builds more towards mystery and fervor and less towards intellectual thought and mediation.

The reading by Kristin Rusch again exemplifies the way that we are newly perceiving truth in modern society as a mixture of all of the above forces come into play. We hold fervent ideas, we have a lot of information and access to information, and yet there is little discussion in society (or in our colleges and universities) about the larger issues of how to learn to think critically and to construct a new knowledge model for our rapidly changing information society. So when Jess and Bryan in "Results" only see the "benefits" of new science and technology and do not really understand the "in-humanity" of such an information-only approach, they lose out on a relationship that might have been like those of the "common" people that thronged around Jess in the park with their "imperfect" children.

We need to learn to seek to define not only what is "the truth" or "the science" or "the technology", but we need to go beyond trying to pin down either "concreteness" or "rightness" and search for what might be basic truths in a pluralistic world that is going to increasingly become less and less like me, and more and more something else. Under such circumstances, models like those of William Perry that model intellectual and ethical development can help us learn what needs to be taught and learned and maybe also about how to go about the process. So what are the universal "truths" that might make a difference in these increasingly unsettling times? In reality, I am back to Harry Potter and Dimbledore, for truth is both beautiful, but also very terrible and it definitely should be treated with very, very great caution.

Further References

Boulter, D. 1999. Public perception of science and associated general issues for the scientist, Phytochemistry, 50(1):1-7.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TH7-3VGGR38-1/2/6cf7b3d20180c75fd4f3c31e7a61308c)

Jenkins, P. 2002. The Next Christianity. The Atlantic Monthly. 290(3):53-68. An interview with Peter Jenkins can be found on the Atlantic Monthly website at: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-09-12.htm

Katz, S. N. 2002. The Pathbreaking, Fractionalized, Uncertain World of Knowledge. The Chronicle Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education. XLIX(4):B7-B9.

Kinraide, T. B. and R. F. Denison. 2003 Strong Inference:  The Way of Science. The American Biology Teacher 65(6):419-424.

Rowling, J. K. 1997. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic Press, NY.

Rusch, Kristine K. 2000 Results. Asimov's Science Fiction 24(3):35-40.