Dominique Damian
True, but not Obvious
Truth Paper
4/13/05
You go through life using the word truth,
thinking you understand it, thinking you are speaking
the truth. Then you get into a class like this and
they ask you some philosophical question that makes you
question everything you have ever believed to be true.
It once seemed like such an easy answer, and if you do
not really think about it is. Truth is honesty, but
then what is honesty, and is that all truth is?
When I think of honesty I think, as I many people do,
of a person telling what they believe the truth to be.
I have three daughters, two of whom just started school
and learned the Pledge of Allegiance. Both swear that
the words are “One nation under God invincible.” When
they say this, they are being honest when they tell me
that that is how it goes. Now, are they telling the
truth? I think so.
My definition comes in three varieties, a
personal truth, a global truth, and a universal truth.
The personal truth is where the honesty comes into
play, like my daughters. They speak a personal truth,
and it can change. As they grow older maybe they will
hear it differently or read the words and realize what
they that was true is incorrect, changing their reality
minutely. Their truth then becomes a global truth, it
is accepted by more.
A worldly truth can change to. A worldly
truth is a reality accepted by the majority of people
on the Earth. For example the Earth was flat.
However, it has never changed shape or dimension, but
now we know that the Earth is round, so what happened?
They were telling the truth when they said the Earth
was flat, even though it was not. When it was proven
that the Earth was round, and people would not fall off
the edge, the reality for almost everyone completely
changed. The category of their truth did not
necessarily change though. It became the truth for the
majority even though this was hard to accept,
understandably. These people resemble A. Square. They
stepped out of the two dimensional world and accepted
the sphere. It seems the longer something is believed,
and the more people who believe it, the harder it is to
disprove. The people who proved that we live on a
three dimensional planet had a personal truth that
became a global truth.
The third class of truth is the universal
truth. This truth cannot change. Therefore, to
include it is debatable. Allow me to explain what I
mean. The universal truth could go on forever. It is
not what people believe to be true, but what is
actually true. So now we know that we live on a round
Earth that is spinning in an infinite universe. What
if our universe was some science experiment for some
greater being? Our seasons, our personalities, our
elements, everything that we know, that we have learned
about our world are being manipulated by something
greater than us. Then say someday we find that this is
true, who’s to say that this being is not just another
science experiment? What if there was no end? Maybe
when we stepped out of the second dimension, we simply
walked into a bigger cave.
The question I now ponder is if or when the
time comes when we discover the fourth dimension, will
the person who first sees it be imprisoned or sent to
some psyche ward? Have we learned from our mistakes,
have we become more enlightened and open minded? Will
we be like A. Square before he entered the third
dimension or afterwards. It seems, through history, we
have to make a few mistakes before we will be able to
question the reality of a fourth dimension. People
talk about it, but I wonder how many would actually
believe someone, take that person seriously, if he said
he has seen it. Maybe someone has seen the fourth
dimension, right before he was sent for psychiatric
care. I think we would be more likely to send someone
there than to jail for saying such odd things.
However, I cannot speak for other countries that are
more religious based. In most cases the criminals that
we now deem geniuses went against the church.
So I conclude that my definition of truth
comes in three categories. One of which may or may not
exist. It is impossible to know for sure when we reach
the universal truth. Speaking in more relative terms,
before entering this class I thought truth as a way to
describe honesty. That is how my children know it;
that is what I think most people use the word. The
global truth is what the majority of us believe now.
This does not have to be on a global level necessarily.
Just a few months ago the majority of the United States
believed Iraq had nuclear weapons, now we believe they
do not. I would have to classify this under global
truths as well.
Part Two
To continue on the path of these three truths I point
out the early astrologers, mathematicians, and
philosophers who had the imagination and courage to
question the global truth, to prove their personal
truths, and come closer to a universal truth, even if
it brought harm upon themselves. We have studied the
great western minds of Einstein, Copernicus, and
Galileo amongst others, but within these we have
omitted one who lived during the same era. Giordano
Bruno was an unfortunate soul who had an imaginative
mind at the wrong time. He linked Copernicus to
Galileo, before Galileo’s telescope. Born in 1548 in
Italy, Bruno was neither a scientist nor mathematician.
He was a philosopher, who made no experiments or
observations. He studied his predecessors and traveled
Europe preaching Copernicus’ ideas, and eventually
expanding upon them, by stating neither the Earth nor
the sun was so special. In Copernicus’ theory the sun
was the center of the universe and the stars were fixed
in a perfect circle outside Saturn’s orbit. Bruno said
that the sun was not the center of the universe, and we
had no idea how to tell what the center was, or even if
there was a center, because the universe was infinite.
“In the Universe no center and no circumference exist,
but the center is everywhere . . . As to us on Earth,
the Earth seems to be the center of the Universe, so
inhabitants of the Moon, the Moon will appear as such .
. . Each world has its center, each its up and down;
these differences are to be assigned relatively” (Bruno
qtd. in Hollister).
Bruno used nothing more than logic and
creativity to come to his conclusion of an infinite
universe, which happened to be right (as far as we
know). Unfortunately, for him, his ideas contradicted
the Catholic Church. “God had no particular relation
to one part of the infinite universe more than any
other. God, according to Bruno, was precisely as
present on Earth as in the Heavens, an immanent God
rather than a remote heavenly deity” (Wikipedia).
During his time the church had no leniency in the midst
of the Italian Renaissance. “Christianity was drained
of its earlier humanism, the great artistic
masterpieces of the southern Renaissance were no longer
being created, the Protestant Reformation was nearly a
century old, and the Inquisition was in full force”
(Hollister). This Inquisition is was what proved to be
fatal for Bruno. He arrogantly expressed his ideas
even after being incarcerated for them. Even given
chance after chance before his dreadful fate he refused
to recant.
I chose Bruno for an example because he did not change
his personal truth even in the face of death; rather he
continued to preach his theory, unsuccessful at
changing the global truth. He was A. Square. “At his
trial, he said: ‘Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce
this sentence against me with greater fear than I
receive it.’ . . . Four hundred years after his
execution, official expression of ‘profound sorrow’
and acknowledgement of error at Bruno’s condemnation to
death was made” (Wikipedia).
Giordano Bruno was a tragic example of the cases I
spoke of before. During this Renaissance the church
controlled the global truth, and anyone who chose to
challenge it was sentenced to death. Bruno was burned
at the stake in the year 1600. Bruno was not the first
to state that the universe was infinite though. There
was Thomas Digges in 1576, Lucretius 2,000 years before
Copernicus, and Nicholas of Cusa in the fifteenth
century, who all questioned the finite universe
(Hollister). However, Bruno was the first to question
God’s role, and say that all of the stars were suns.
The others mended their theories to include some type
of infinite God as well. Religion used fear to control
personal truths. Since this time we have become more
lenient, or understandable at least. Religion has
become so big now there are many varieties of a certain
religion, and many religions living within one country.
We have to be more tolerant to other’s beliefs or our
world would result in complete chaos.
However, when you think about it those who claim to
have seen the light, or been abducted by aliens, ‘or
Spaceland’ you may realize that these people are often
written off as lunatics. What if their personal truth
is closer to the universal truth, and nobody believes
them. So how far have we actually come? Really we
have simply changed the sentencing from death to
labeling (which may be just as bad). No one desires to
be an outcast, and to challenge our reality would
immediately isolate him or her.
Bruno’s logic led him to a, what turned out to be, a
more accurate universal truth. So what can we, with
all of the knowledge we now have, logically deduce?
And what is limiting our thoughts?
References
Warn Hollister. “Giordano Bruno and the Infinite
Universe” Griffith Observer. February, 1975.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno