Bob Hartwig wrote:
> A claim is true if it can be independently, rigorously, repeatedly
> verified. If there were no claims of this nature, science and mathematics
> could not exist. Therefore, I hold science and mathematics as evidence
> that there is "truth".
Mathematicians have a somewhat different concept of
truth than other scientists. A proposition is true in mathematics
if it follows from your assumptions. If you channge the
assumptions, you get a different mathematical theory.
So mathematics doesn't deal with absolute truth--just
with what follows from axioms. Questions like
"is it true that if A is true then B is true" are metamathematics.
You have to assume some axioms and some logical principles
which are outside the theory.
Physics, on the other hand, has a different kind of truth. Something
is true in physics if it agrees with experimental evidence. So Newton's
theory of gravitation was true until about a century ago.
As for absolute truth, I can't conceive of reality without it. How can it
be absolutely true that there is no absolute truth? On the other hand,
it is very possible that some absolute questions are undecidable
(a la Godel's Theorem) in any logical system that we can comprehend.
"Every branch of knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles,
vanishes into mystery." -Arthur Machen
Bill Haloupek
haloupekb@uwstout.edu
http://www.mscs.uwstout.edu/~billh/home.html