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Science and Truth

By Paul Singer

The new economy is a product of relatively recent scientific discoveries. The fact that it offers almost free information and much cheaper online services, has a prestigious effect on science for being responsible for such miracles. The New Economy is like science's child, it is still linked to its mother by its umbilical cord, just like scientific procedures use computing science in order to generate new segments in the New Economy. The internet is one of those examples: it first began as a net inside a college and then it spread to the regular use.

Science generates a kind of knowledge that, in its essence, is not very different from the knowledge everyone obtains when observing and realizing what goes on around them and absorbing the new information by adding it to the previously stored information. This absorption does not happen by accident but it happens according to a logic procedure. The new information is compared to the others, of the same field, and its worthiness is tested. If it is congruent with what the person already knows it integrates together with what is called his wisdom, if it is not, it can either be rejected or kept in doubt's edge in what is called his temporary knowledge, which will not automatically be thrown out {forgotten} but kept separately, until new knowledge comes to confirm or deny it. This way all of us are constantly remaking and enriching our knowledge.

Sometimes, this new unknown knowledge is so important that we want to check our doubts, consulting other external information sources such as friends, acquaintances, teachers, specialists, encyclopedias, books and so on. By doing that, we might be able to certify whether this new knowledge is true or false. And, perhaps, on the contrary, we can still feel doubtful about it, reaching other kinds of knowledge we thought were right. Whatever we do, by taking our time to check new knowledge we always learn, we always add up to our new knowledge "stock".

Scientists work in an analogical way, doing it professionally, though. They search this new knowledge through observations that are done by tested, controlled methods, so that they can be repeated. This procedure allows other scientists to test this new knowledge in its origin, in other words, whether the observation has captured "reality" or not. Measuring is very important in natural and human sciences, and it often generates controversies.

If the new pieces of information the scientist has gathered confirms the scientific knowledge is relevant, they will be added to it. However, science only advances when scientific knowledge is improved or restructured. A lot of information may partially or fully deny the previous accumulated knowledge, which was supposedly true. Such information always gives rise to never-ending controversies.All kinds of science are often the object of all sorts of divergence.

There are deep divisions in human sciences since the observed object - the human being, either as an individual or in society - is the same species of the observer, who is clearly interested in what he observes. Scientist only observe, measure and compare accumulated knowledge because they intend to use it to influence the behavior of people and institutions, specially the governmental ones. For this reason, each human science subject is divided between those who accept the existing institutions and those who reject them and propose their replacement.

The true content of knowledge is always provisory, no matter if it is scientific or not. However, if it is scientific knowledge it is always more challenging for the scientific community to gather more information and ideas. For this reason, scientific knowledge is more uniform and consistent in all its "schools of thinking". And this is what I am going to write about next week.

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