Reality, science and the search for meaning

I first wrote this short reflection some years ago and have revisited it for publication here. I have made only modest revisions, because the central question remains as important to me now as it did then: what is truth?

When Jesus stood before Pilate, he stated, according to John, that the reason he had been born and had come into the world was to testify to the truth. Pilate responded with the deceptively simple question: ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:37–38).

That question is the subject of this short reflection.

Truth is one of the most important subjects in both philosophy and theology. Some of the finest minds in human history have wrestled with the question of what we mean when we describe something as true. The fact that the question remains contested is testimony not to its irrelevance, but to its enduring importance.

The search for truth is a peculiarly human endeavour. We are drawn to questions of truth and meaning, and they can evoke powerful responses and extraordinary passion. Human beings are, to the best of my knowledge, the only species that consciously craves meaning. Throughout history we have created stories, philosophies, religions and systems of thought that help give shape and substance to that search.

Implicit within much of this enquiry is an apparently straightforward understanding of truth: that what is true corresponds in some meaningful way with fact or reality. Philosophers describe this as the correspondence theory of truth. If I say that something is the case, my statement is true if the world really is that way. That which corresponds with reality is true; that which does not is false.

Of course, matters are rarely quite that straightforward.

Facts themselves can be complicated things. Simon Blackburn observes that it is tempting to think of facts simply as structures or arrangements in the world. Ludwig Wittgenstein recognised that the relationship is more subtle. Objects and structures occupy space and time; facts do not quite work in the same way.

Blackburn uses a helpful illustration. The Eiffel Tower could, at least theoretically, be dismantled and rebuilt somewhere else. But the fact that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris cannot itself be dismantled and transported elsewhere. There is clearly a relationship between facts, the world and statements about the world, but understanding precisely what that relationship consists of has occupied philosophers for centuries.

The American Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga once described the contemporary Western intellectual world as a battleground of ideas. One of the most influential intellectual movements of the twentieth century was logical positivism. At its heart was verificationism: broadly, the idea that a proposition could only make a meaningful factual claim if it was capable of empirical verification.

The attraction is obvious. Science possesses extraordinarily powerful tools for examining the physical world. Observation, experimentation, measurement and replication have transformed our understanding of reality.

The difficulty came when one particular way of discovering truth began to be treated as though it were the only legitimate way of speaking about truth.

Questions that could not be subjected to empirical verification, many of the traditional questions of philosophy, metaphysics, theology and ethics, were increasingly regarded by some thinkers as meaningless rather than merely different kinds of questions.

There is an irony here. The proposition that only empirically verifiable claims are meaningful cannot itself be established through empirical verification. Verificationism therefore struggles to satisfy its own test.

Logical positivism no longer commands the influence it once exercised within philosophy, but something of the assumption behind it survives: the idea that science alone possesses the authority to tell us what is ultimately true.

A modern expression of this attitude can be found in Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design. Reflecting on some of the great questions about reality, Hawking famously declared that ‘philosophy is dead’ and that scientists had become the bearers of the torch in humanity’s search for knowledge. There is something rather odd about this claim. Much of the book that follows is engaged in precisely the kind of reasoning traditionally associated with philosophy.

John Lennox responded characteristically sharply that nonsense remains nonsense even when spoken by world-famous scientists. The wit makes a serious point. To declare philosophy dead is itself to make a philosophical claim. Physics cannot conduct an experiment that establishes that philosophy is unnecessary.

None of this diminishes science. Quite the opposite. The achievements of modern science are breathtaking. But recognising the extraordinary power of science should not require us to pretend that science can answer every kind of question human beings may reasonably ask.

Science is exceptionally good at explaining what happens and increasingly how it happens. It is less well equipped to tell us why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe is intelligible, whether moral obligations are real, whether human beings possess inherent dignity, or what ultimately gives life meaning.

Consider, for example, the apparent fine-tuning of the universe for the possibility of life. Science can describe with remarkable accuracy the physical constants and processes involved. What those facts ultimately mean is a different question.

The British physicist Fred Hoyle, reflecting upon the extraordinary conditions necessary for the formation of carbon within stars, famously observed that a common-sense interpretation suggested that ‘a superintellect has monkeyed with physics’. Hoyle was no Christian apologist. His observation simply illustrates the point that scientific discoveries can themselves generate questions that science, operating as science, may not finally answer.

What is the truth behind the physical facts? That question matters increasingly in what is often described as a post-truth age. We live at a time when scepticism about truth sometimes sits rather strangely alongside extraordinary certainty about personal opinion. We are told that truth can be socially constructed, culturally conditioned or dependent upon perspective. There is undoubtedly something important here: culture, language, experience and perspective profoundly influence how human beings interpret the world.

But it does not follow that reality itself is infinitely malleable. The Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris uses the helpful idea of the unamendability of reality. The world possesses a stubborn resistance to human wishes. We can interpret reality differently, argue about it, misunderstand it or refuse to accept it. What we cannot ultimately do is make reality conform to our preferences simply by willing it to be otherwise.

The Alps provide a fairly straightforward illustration. We may describe them differently, attach different cultural meanings to them or disagree about their significance, but the mountains remain remarkably indifferent to our opinions. They existed before us and, barring some extraordinary geological event, will remain long after us.

Reality pushes back.

For most of us, this is simply how we live. Whatever sophisticated philosophical position we might adopt in a seminar room, everyday life depends upon the assumption that some things are actually true and others are not. We expect aircraft engineers, surgeons, judges and accountants to distinguish between reality and error. We would find life almost impossible if truth were merely whatever an individual or community chose it to be.

For the Christian, however, the question ‘What is truth?’ ultimately reaches beyond propositions, facts and theories of knowledge. The Christian claim is that truth is finally grounded in God.

That does not make scientific or philosophical enquiry unnecessary. Nor does it mean that Christians possess easy answers to every difficult question. Rather, it places the search for truth within a larger understanding of reality. The world is intelligible because it has an intelligible source. Truth is not something human beings create; it is something we seek to discover.

The Christian therefore has no reason to fear serious enquiry. If truth ultimately has its source in God, then the careful examination of reality, through science, philosophy, history, theology or any other honest intellectual discipline, ought to be welcomed.

Pilate’s question therefore remains as important now as it was two thousand years ago.

What is truth?

Perhaps the search for the answer tells us something important about what it means to be human.