FACT

[Norm's notes: Here I go again.  Bear with me as I continue to explore certain concepts.  If I were to write a book, the next several posts (including the first) would have been located in an appendix at the back of it.  Since, I 'm blogging I see a need to put this information up front for reference in future in posts .]

What makes facts factual? 

A fact is some thing or function that proves to be consistently demonstrable and reliable and can be readily apprehended as such by any rational human being.

Reality is a consensus of perceptions.

If the aggregate of human beings, past and present, agree on what something is and this something functions consistently throughout history, that's what it is.   Whatever "it" is becomes a fact.  On a daily basis we don't have to think about the fact that a chair is a chair, that a tree is a tree, or that wheels will turn on an axle.  They've become a given regardless of the language used.

Over time the process of establishing fact led to greater manipulation of our environment.  Facts can be so reliable that they result in concretized perceptions requiring little or no conscious effort on our part.

There are abstract facts. For example, time can mean different things in different cultures, and there are some primitive cultures that have no concept of time.  Simply put, time is the measurement of decay, but the more time is studied, the more it appears to possess functions beyond the clicking of a clock. 

Fact, as a concept, allows us to use discriminative reasoning. The human mind is a questioning mind. Inevitably, questions arise that challenge the factualness of events and things. The endless inquiry of the human mind can readily disestablish a fact as it can establish one.

For example, the Ptolemaic concept of the Sun revolving around the Earth was for centuries considered a fact.  It met the basic criteria for being one:  It was consistently demonstrable and proven to be reliable.  The Sun rose in the East and set in the West.  You could watch it move.  In a manner of speaking, you could set your clock by it. 

From Ptolemy's geocentric concept one could reason many things; the time of day and seasons, for example. It demonstrated an ordered universe that argued against the need for further definition.

Then came Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton who were able to debunk Ptolemy's concept and by extension a number of related "facts" that emerged from it. They and many who followed set a new trajectory for our understanding of the universe and our place in it. 

Facts are subject to change. 

As scientific and historical research becomes more exacting, facts become increasingly fluid and  their establishment limited. 

If the term is used at all, scientist and historian are quick to admit that what they are calling a fact is based on evidence available at the time.  Any person involved in sincere research maintains room for change.  Something is factual until it no longer holds upon being scrutinized.

Scientists are likely to formulate their evidence in the context of theory rather than fact.  This does not mean that scientific theory has no useful application.  Quite the contrary, numerous theoretical discoveries have led to innovations being used millions of people at this very moment.

As with scientific fact, historical fact can change with new evidence.  As scientist probe ever deeper into the macrocosm and microcosm and historians probe deeper into the past, the more speculative the results of their research can appear.

Speculation in both the historical and scientific sense is not a hunch. Rather, speculation of this type is the result of extensive observation and testing to determine corollary evidence. An early example of this process is found in Darwin's development of evolutionary theory. Here both history and science merged. 

The Theory of Evolution continues to make immense contributions to science of living things; especially, to the field medicine.   Like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein, Darwin changed the way we live and changed our understanding of who we are in the living word around us. 

For that, Charles Darwin should be sainted.

In our expanding understanding of the universe, we are prone to see ourselves transcending the boundaries of self, the earth, our solar system, our galaxy, and the universe itself, but have we become any less geocentric, any less homocentric then in the past?

Is there a limit to what can be known as fact? 

Can something be factual that is truly outside of ourselves, beyond the reach of our five senses, beyond the collective memory of humankind, outside of what we know here on Earth?  

For example, when a new element is identified, its discovery is the result of perceiving a differential function of what is already known about elements in general and their constituent parts.  I know of no element, no function found in the universe that is not rooted in, related to, or comprised of things known on Earth. 

What seems to provide us with a sense of transcendence is that we are continually finding the stuff of Earth, the stuff of our physical selves located "out there," in the vastness of space.

No matter how quirky space becomes, its quirks are perceptible to us because we know how the elements and properties that are acting quirkily at some distant location in the universe acts closer to home.  

But if there were to exist a principal at work, a substance or particle in the universe that completely stands outside of what we experience here, would we be able to perceive or conceive it? Can we truly think beyond ourselves?

If our thought process is finite in its capacity to apprehend only that which is factually perceptible, then we remain as geocentric and homocentric as ever.

Ultimately, our endeavors to probe the depths of the macro and microcosm would result in finding ourselves caught in a self-contained circular reality in which all new information is nothing more than a re-formalization of what is already known. 

Granted, such a self-contained circle would be immense, but in the end there would be "nothing new under the sun," nothing discovered which would be completely germane to itself.

What of factual abstraction?

Math amazes and baffles me. My wife teaches math and I struggled with math throughout my entire years of education. She sees and understands some things in way that I don't, and I see and understand some things in a way that she doesn't, and this works for us. We share a mutual appreciation and admiration of our unique, individual abilities which in turn provides balance to our lives and meaning in our relationship.

For theoretical mathematicians and physicists, math is a language and an art form.  There is beauty in math. Math is a transcendent language.  Math is capable of grasping  the intricacies of physical universe, of breaking it into increasingly small parts or conceptualizing and building theoretical new ones.

Every physical object and every function known to humans, including art, cooking, music, and language can be understood in mathematical terms. 

Math is at the core of our understanding what is and how it works.   It can see what the eye and the highest powered telescope and microscope cannot see.   This knowledge is expressed through the use of abstract symbols to comprise exquisite mathematical formulas. 

While facts appear to be limited, our ability to use them in nonfactual, creative ways appears limitless.  If human thought has this infinite capacity, it's conceivable that we could transcend both our geocentric and homocentric understanding of ourselves and the cosmos.

Expressing such information in language would almost totally rely on the use of allegory, metaphor and simile for expression. It would not, however, meet the criteria of fact or theory.

The empirical fields of study such as science and history tends to work within the finite spectrum where facts and theory regarding what things are and how they work are built upon pre-existing data for definition. 

On the other hand, philosophy, the arts, and religion work within the infinite spectrum of thought where allegory, metaphor, and myth are used to define who we are and why we're here.

The human mind contains both a finite and an infinite thought capacity that works in tandem to further human understanding.  Although at times treated by some as mutually exclusive, I would argue they are not. 

While fact is not all that can be apprehended by human thought, the concept of fact undergirds our perceptions of the thoughts we have. Individuals tend to demonstrate a preference in utilizing one thought-type over another. 

It is this dichotomy of thought-type that confuses some with regard to what is fact and what some would consider myth. 

Wouldn't it be interesting if the empirical fields of science and the philosophical field of religion, for instance, would merge into a singular field of inquiry?

Until next time, stay faithful.


Until then, stay faithful.