Truth: Part II

I have been discussing Truth.

In my previous post, I shared one of the more mystical events that I find in my memory. There are others there. I have also shared how recent events have opened the possibility for me that many things that I once thought were “in my imagination” may be part of a wider shared reality.

I need to understand what is true.

I suppose that the search for truth has been a lifelong activity for me. When you think about it, my career has been focused on truth since I became a professional technologist. I have been working with logic since I was about 15 years old. It happened to be digital logic but then, logic is logic, the philosophy of truth.

I have been thinking about scientific truth. I am exploring that some in my other blog (http://scilog.modernmysticman.com). Do scientists actually know what is true? I know a few professional physicists and they don’t seem to even believe in an objective concept of truth. The theories and laws of science seem to be determined by their utility and not much more. As long as they are self-consistent, it’s “all good”.

The theories of science, however, are based on a set of underlying concepts (postulates or axioms) and if we relax some of those postulates, then the framework of scientific truth begins to expand drastically. It seems to me that the history of unification in scientific thought has been delineated by the relaxation of the underlying assumptions upon which we base our view of the world.

If this were so, then scientific truth would be based on choice.

Perhaps truth is something that we can perceive. Maybe there is a sense that we have that allows us to determine if some concept or idea is true. When a scientist studies a set of formulas, what is happening is that their consciousness is evolving into a new configuration. If they can “understand” the concepts described by the formula, they will perceive the truth of it. But, there must be a desire to do so, of course.

I had an experience once while studying geometrical algebra. I won’t go into the details of GA here. What is important is that as I studied the concepts, I suddenly felt as if my heart and mind were expanding without limit. My whole body began to vibrate and I perceived such beauty, as I had never experienced before. I felt a kind of intellectual ecstasy. My experience was confirmed later when I discussed it with a physicist colleague of mine. He told me that he used to have wet dreams about the beautiful concepts that he was studying while doing work as a grad or post-grad student. He said he would awake each morning in anticipation of entering the “beautiful world” of a particular theorist.

If this is truth, it is truly a beautiful experience. I have experienced the same thing while walking to work or making Love or meditating. I recently had this same experience at a classical concert at my middle daughter’s university (she’s a violist).

Whatever this is. I LOVE IT!