So the statement ‘the earth is the centre of the universe’ is in fact a fact as long as someone thinks it is true. Sometimes facts are hard to question. It is not easy to understand that something you have believed all your life is actually false. So sometimes we tend to accept facts that we are told without questioning them. For example, when in the early 20th century coloured people began to ask for equal rights as whites, it was seen as unacceptable. Until then, the whites had believed, and therefore took for a fact, that blacks were an inferior species, like or perhaps worse than their household canine pets. Coloured people fought for their rights and finally gained them and a new generation of people emerged that is, mostly, comfortable with the idea of blacks being equal. And yet many people who belong to that past generation are still unable accept the equality of the blacks. Or perhaps when the first man stepped on the surface of the moon, a brilliant astronaut, by the name of Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 created history. Many people at the time just could not accept this to be true and some like my grandfather died believing the great leap of history was actually a hoax. This was because he, like many others was brought up very religiously and just could not accept the idea of man travelling outside the atmosphere.
So what else is involved in the proof of a statement? For a statement to be considered true, it is not only a question of whether you can prove it to be true or false. The answer runs much deeper than facts. Although facts play a big part in the proof of an argument, it is also a matter of personal opinion and belief. Lets look back at my second example of Galileo Galilei, who went against all beliefs that the earth was the centre of the universe. Because of his theory, the pope himself excommunicated him, from the Catholic Church. He has proved that the earth could not be at the centre of the universe as he had noticed that the earth not only spun on its own axis but also around the sun. This was a fact. But this fact on its own was not enough to prove the statement true.
Sometimes we can come to false truths. Why is this? For something to be true, it has to correspond to reality. So once the mind accepts that a fact certainly corresponds with reality then, only then, is a statement true. But can we ever achieve 100% certainty? Even the greatest scientists would tell you that when performing any experiment there is always a margin of error. It is because of this exactly, that in order for something to be true, we always make a leap of faith, and believe that what we find is true.
It is because of this leap of faith, or belief, that we sometimes reach false truths or false facts like the example of the earth being the centre of the universe. It is a false truth. But how do we each false truth? If proving a statement involves not only facts but belief as well, then a false truth can be reached, either when we are supplied with false facts, facts that do not correspond with our reality, and therefore we arrive at the corresponding truth; or, we are given a limited number of facts and the leap of faith we have to make is too large and aimed at a vague direction.
Belief is needed when facts cannot be connected, when a link is missing, or when something cannot be fully proven. As I said earlier, we can never be 100% certain of anything, however we take some arguments to be just that, 100% certain. For example I am certain that the sun has, is and will rise every morning in England. But how can I prove this fact true if facts on their own are not enough?
What are the facts that bring us to the conclusion that the sun rises every morning in England? Scientifically speaking, we today know for a fact that the earth rotates around the sun and on an axis every twenty-four hours and it is because of this slanted rotation that the sun ‘rises’ every morning. But what else makes this statement true? If we were to ask a young child why he knew that the sun rose he would probably give you a much simpler answer: ‘because it does’. Because he has seen it happen. He therefore then has two kinds of proofs, the proofs that he has been told, and the ones he has received first-hand. It is because he has seen it happen, and because the facts make a logical connection that he accepts the fact as true.
Another part that is of importance when proving a fact is what is known as third party approval. When we know something, we collect information, facts mainly empirically. These facts then form a logical connection and then we can call it a proof. But to prove a statement true, we sometimes need the approval of the majority. It is because of this that we know that the sun raises and that pigs don’t fly.
The question of proof is deeply connected with the idea of certainty. It is a difficult topic to debate, as we often don’t realize the process that takes place inside our minds when we say that something is true or false. We often don’t question nor analyse our minds intrigued process and it is because of this that we often don’t realize how we come to certain conclusions.
By: Solage Di Rocca Gr. 12