Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Three truths about what ‘science’ means.
First part, We.

According to Heidegger, there are two kinds of truths.

A. A proposition is ‘true’ if what’s being said there is in perfect correspondence with reality.
B. A proposition is ‘true’ if the proposition encompasses everything the ‘communicator’ knows about the subject at hand.

‘OK, you promised us a discourse about science and here you are babbling about truth…’

Impatient as always!
How do you determine whether something being said, a proposition, is in (perfect) correspondence with the reality of the fact described there?

To be able to do that, you need first to determine the reality itself.
You know what’s being said – more about that later, and, if you are to determine whether what’s being said is true, you now need to know the truth itself.
How are you going to do that?
You either know it already or you proceed to determine that particular truth.

I’ll leave aside the ‘already known truth’ and proceed towards the ‘future truth’.

A particular individual has two possible approaches towards finding out a ‘new’ truth. A piece of ‘true’ information which is new for that particular person.
Consult a reliable source or investigate the reality.

‘Consulting a reliable source’ brings us back to square one. How do you determine whether a source is reliable or not….
‘Investigate the reality’… Easier said than done!

How do you do that? How do you investigate the reality in a reliable manner? How do you determine the truth of the matter when ‘things’ are a tad more complicated than touching a stove to determine whether it’s hot or not?

You use the scientific approach?
Start from the scientific data base which already exists on the subject(s) closer to your object of interest then proceed using the proven scientific method of trial and error? Emit a hypothesis, try to prove it, formulate a theory and then challenge your peers to tear apart the results of your investigation?

Results you have chased being convinced from the beginning that you’ll never reach the ‘pinnacle’?
Convinced from the beginning that the ‘absolute truth’ – even about the merest subject, is out of reach?
For us, mere mortals, anyway?

‘But if ‘absolute truth’ is out of reach, then how can we determine whether the simplest proposition is actually true?
And why continue to bother about the whole subject, anyway?!?’

Before attempting to find an answer to your question, let me formulate another one.

Let’s consider that you have reached a conclusion about something. That you are in possession of ‘a truth’. How are you going to share it? With your brethren/peers?
I must remember you at this stage of our discussion that language is beautiful but rather inexact. Are you sure that you’ll be able to communicate everything you want to say? To cover every minute aspect of the truth you have just found?
So that the proposition you are about to put together will be in absolute correspondence with the piece of reality you have just discovered?

You are not going to use language at all?
You’re just going to point to your discovery? And let everybody else to discover the truth for themselves?
And how many are going to take you seriously? To pay attention? To what you have pointed?
And how many are going to suspect that you just want to take their focus off what’s really important? To lead their attention away of what you want to keep under wraps?

I’ve got your head spinning?
Then you must understand my confusion. I’m so deep in this that I have to go back and read again what I’ve been writing…

So.
‘Science’ tells us that the ultimate truth is out of our grasp, linguistics/theory of communication tells us no messenger will ever be able to be absolutely precise nor convey the entire intended meaning … what are we going to do?
Settle down and wait for the end to happen to us?

OK, let me introduce you to an absolute truth.

WE ARE HERE!

Who is here?
‘Us’. We are here.

What are we doing here?
‘Are’. We are here.

Where are we?
‘Here’. We are here!

I’ve been recently reminded that mathematics, the most exact language we have at our disposal, is based on a number of postulates. On a small number of axioms – pieces of truth we consider to be self evident, which have constituted a wide enough foundation for mathematics to become what it is today.
But mathematics is far more than a simple language. It is also a ‘virtual space’. A space where special rules apply. A space where our thoughts move according to certain and specific ‘instructions’. A space where we enter holding our arms around a problem we need to solve and which we exit, if successful, with a solution inside our head.

A little bit of history.
Our ancestors had a problem. A class of problems, actually.
How to build something – a house, a temple, a boat, and how to ‘manage’ property – arable land, in particular, but also crops and other ‘stocks’. Problems easier to formulate, and solve, using numbers.
To solve this class of problems, some of our ancestors have invented ‘mathematics’. Had ‘discovered’ the self evident truths – axioms, and then ‘carved’ an entire (virtual) space using the axioms as the foundation upon which they, and those who have followed in their steps, have built – and continue to build, the scaffolding of rules which keep that space ‘open’.

Through thinking, our ancestors have carved a space in which to solve some problems they have encountered in the ‘real’ world…

‘Please stop!
I don’t understand something.
Do you want to say that mathematics is not real?’

To answer this question, this very good question, we need to settle what ‘real’ means.
To us, at least…

Let’s examine this rock. Is it real?
Why? Because you can feel it? If you close your eyes, I can make it so that you experience the same feeling by touching something else to your stretched out fingers than the original rock. In a few years, I’ll be able to produce the same sensation in your brain by inserting some electrodes in your skull and applying the ‘proper’ amount of electric current. What will ‘reality’ become then?

Forget about that rock, for a moment, and consider this table.

Is it real? Even if it’s not as natural as the rock we were analyzing before?
‘Artificial’ – as in man made, starting from natural ‘resources’, might be a good description of the difference between a table and a ‘simple’ rock. Both ‘real’ in the sense that both imply consequences. Your foot will hurt if you stumble in the dark on either of them. Regardless of the rock being natural and the table happening to be artificial…

‘But what about things which are not of a material nature?
Are they real?’

Are you asking me whether ‘metaphysical’ objects – God, for instance, are real?
Then how about ‘law’. Is it real? As an aside, does law belong also to the metaphysical realm? Alongside God? Who determines which thing belongs there?

Or have you glimpsed the fact that ‘truth’, the concept of truth, is a metaphysical ‘object’?
Something which, like God, has a ‘real’ side but makes no sense (to us) unless we think about it?
Something which we have extracted – someway, somehow, from the surrounding reality – where else from? – then ‘carved’ a virtual space around it? So that we may examine it without the distractions of the rest of the ‘real’ world?

Or have you glimpsed also that even the concept of ‘reality’ is a figment of our self-reflecting conscience?

Yesterday I read an article which stated that ‘when it comes to violin there are a lot of things that are more important than talent‘.

I must confess that I was taken aback.
Not as much by the call itself but by the very fact that someone would actually make a call like that.
Compare apples and oranges, that is.

OK, both these two can be found in the same department of the grocery store and are somewhat similarly shaped so…

The whole thing made me wonder ‘how is it that we compare things’?

Simply. We choose a standard and then measure the things we want to compare against that standard.
According to our interest in the matter, of course.

That’s why a comparison is not only easier but also less contestable when that standard is actually measurable.
A dimension, for instance. Nobody in his right mind will ever contest a proposition like ‘this orange is larger than this apple’.
Or an evident feature shared by the items being compared. ‘Apples are usually smoother than oranges’.

In these cases, when the items are easily comparable – sometimes even against the current mantra, we can say that the characteristics used to compare them are ‘parallel’ to each other.

parralel

Here we can, easily and undoubtedly, determine that one is ‘taller’ than the other.

parralel 2

Or we can make that call by measuring the intensity with which a characteristic shared by both categories manifests itself: “Apples are usually smoother than oranges”.

But what if the things we are trying to compare are defined by characteristics which are perpendicular to each other?

Like length and width, for instance.
In fact this particular case is relatively simple. Here we can determine whether one is longer than the other, wider than the other or if the area covered by one is bigger than that covered by the other.
And, for each case, it would be relatively simple to determine which of the two characteristics is more important. According to each individual situation and to our interest in the matter.
After all it doesn’t make much sense to buy a very long and narrow strip of fabric if you want to make a shirt nor to buy a square shaped cloth if you need some ribbon.

Things are more delicate though if the characteristics are ‘perpendicular’ only in a figurative manner of speaking. For instance talent and dedication. Or opportunity and diligence. In both these situations it’s extremely hard to make a call as to which member of the pair is the more important. Simply because without any of them the other is utterly useless. Despite our moral biases. Like ‘dedication is more important than talent’. Or ‘Lady Luck will never fail to smile to the really diligent’.

I’m not implying here that preparing yourself for life, like learning and training, is useless. Quite the contrary.
I’m simply saying that you need first to determine what you are really good at.
It doesn’t make much sense to put a lot of effort into something simply because someone tells you that you’ll become better at it if you work really hard.

Yes, the harder you work at something the better you’ll become at it. But what about spending the same amount of effort at something you are talented for?

So go find out what you are really good at.
If you are diligent enough in your search you’ll eventually find out something that you enjoy doing and others find useful.

And that, my friend, is the real happiness.

Or, in Csikszentmihalyi‘s terms, it would mean that you’d have reached the state of ‘Flow‘.

The Truth about Science

Comparing apples with oranges.

The Truth about Science

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Comparing apples with oranges.

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