The Search for Truth

“Some
people might wonder what motivates a physics teacher to get up and talk
about religion and world issues. I am not a professional political
scientist or sociologist or theologian. But I am a concerned citizen and
a thinking person. To be a scientist does not mean you have to be a
one-dimensional person out of touch with life beyond the lab. Physics
used to be called natural philosophy. It is a branch of philosophy in
that it is part of the quest for truth. The same thing that motivates me
to ponder the true nature of the physical world leads me to explore
other realms as well. On another level, I am concerned with political
and religious issues because science is not conducted in an ivory tower.
I have to come to grips with the fact that one of the largest employers
of scientists and engineers is the defense industry. There are social
consequences to what we do. I feel it is my responsibility as a physics
teacher to help you become not only technically proficient, but also a
thinking, caring person who will not automatically sell your talents to
the highest bidder.

Enough introduction. What I want to talk
about today is the search for truth. First, I encourage you to think.
Most people don’t think. They listen to people they think they can trust
and then they believe what they are told. That’s why propaganda works
so efficiently. Socrates encouraged his followers to think, and he was
accused of corrupting the youth. The reason is pretty clear. When you
think for yourself you may come out with answers that deviate from the
accepted truths of society around you. It means a lot of people are
going to be upset with you.

When it comes to thinking, there is a
word you need to understand, and that is “Orthodoxy.” This world is
full of orthodoxies, both in religion and in other fields. Orthodoxy
literally means “right thinking.” Orthodoxy places a high premium on
holding to the truth, and in that sense it is good. But there is a
paradox here. Orthodoxy can intimidate or punish those who actually have
the highest commitment to truth: the critical thinkers who risk falling
into heresy by pushing the search for truth into new regions or
critically analyzing, and possibly rejecting, the accepted truths of the
past. True orthodoxy, if it really values truth, must prefer heretical
ideas over unexamined ideas. One must not be afraid of heresy and error
or one would never leave home base. Orthodoxy represents the accumulated
wisdom of generations, and thus it is foolish to dismiss it lightly.
But truth is not static. Our knowledge is partial and uncertain. Truth
does not come handed to us on a platter.

We show up on this
planet and look around and wonder who the heck we are and what the world
is all about. Coming to the truth involves a search. Everyone out there
you turn to for answers is a searcher as well. This is not to
discourage you. Take it from me, a fellow searcher: I believe there are
glimpses of the truth to be had out there.

Another key word is
conservatism. What do people mean when they talk about conservatism? I
am really a pretty conservative guy. I am married to the woman I live
with, I work for a living, I don’t have purple hair or wear an earring
in my ear. Many of my ideas are pretty conservative too. I grew up in a
Republican, family that attended a very conservative Protestant church. I
never went through a massive teenage rebellion where I threw out all
that my parents believed and started from scratch. A lot of my ideas are
different now, but I got from there to here along an evolutionary path
of small, incremental changes in my thinking as I was exposed to new
ideas and new experiences.

Conservatism is most often associated
with political ideas. I find it ironic that political conservatives seem
to be the most prone to wave flags and indulge in the symbolism and
rhetoric of the American Revolution, while putting down revolutions
wherever they crop up in the world. It seems to me that true
conservatism in America should mean retaining the spirit that inspired
the revolution, not empire building around the world. I don’t see true
conservatism in America today; I see greed.

The basic idea behind
conservatism is that it is good to stay connected to your roots. One
area that is very conservative in its very nature is science. Isaac
Newton would never have arrived at his law of gravitation if he had not
built upon what Kepler and Copernicus and Galileo had achieved before
him. He said that if he saw farther than other men it was because he
stood on the shoulders of giants. In other words his ideas were rooted
in the accumulated knowledge of his day. Science that has no roots is
pseudo science.

There is another word that also deals with the
concept of roots, and that is radicalism. “Radical” literally means to
go to the root. Science also offers examples of radical changes in
thought. Copernicus shifted the center of the universe from the earth to
the sun. That’s a pretty radical shift in thinking. Instead of two
separate realms, the earth down here and the heavens up there, the earth
became a heavenly body and the heavenly bodies became other worlds.
Interestingly enough, the more scholars study the process by which
Copernicus came up with this radical idea, the more they are impressed
with the conservatism that lay behind it. The real reason Copernicus
rejected the planetary theories of his day was that with all the
complications added to improve the accuracy of computations, the theory
was getting too far from the roots established by Aristotle. By cutting
through all the frills, searching for the real fundamentals of planetary
science, in the manner of a true conservative, he adjusted one of the
foundation ideas and came to be seen as a radical thinker. The ideas he
proposed spawned what has become known as the Copernican Revolution.

True
conservatism and true radicalism have a lot in common. Neither is the
province of shallow thinking. To find ones roots, whether to preserve
them or to criticize them, requires one to cut through all the
underbrush of conventional ideas that hide them. Often, as in the case
of Copernicus, the true conservative and the true radical are one in the
same person.

There is one final word I want to call your
attention to: Lies. People lie. People in power lie BIG. This sounds
harsh, but it is real. People who lie believe they are justified in
lying, otherwise lying would be very hard. They see lying as part of
what they have to do to accomplish some worthy purpose. Most of us, with
our limited ambitions, are comfortable only with small lies, but those
who have the most sweeping and wonderful plans have learned to use the
Big Lie. I am very concerned about the times we are living in because
people are more willing to listen to lies than to learn the truth. The
biggest lies today, are committed in the name of the noblest purpose:
“national security”. The problem is that lies destroy human community
and the prospect of true democracy. Lies may protect us, but they
destroy us at the core leaving nothing worth protecting.

John
Stockwell, a high ranking CIA officer who dropped out and went public
because of his conscience, says 1/3 of the people working under him were
“propagandists.” They spent time fabricating outright lies to feed into
the U.S. press and the briefings of political figures who would be
quoted in the press. Most of us look for biases in the news, but we
generally don’t expect outright lies.

Look at the labels that are
used to shape our thinking in the media. We may as well start at the
top of the list with “Disinformation.” Lies aren’t disinformation, they
are lies! Calling it disinformation is a pitiful attempt to avoid the
truth; hence the term itself is a lie.

“Terrorism” is used by the
administration and the media to apply to desperate violent acts of
relatively powerless groups, often in response to a documented history
of injustice. On the other hand, the reign of terror of a non-communist
dictator, using disappearances and torture, resulting in the deaths of
tens of thousands of people is referred to simply as counterinsurgency.

“Humanitarian
Aid” is a lie in broad daylight for all who are willing to see, when it
refers to money given to a mercenary army of our own making,
administered by the CIA with little or no accountability for how it is
spent.

We use the concept of “outlaw states” for countries like
Libya, that support “terrorists”. The system of international law,
established through a long history of treaties and applied even to
individuals at Nuremberg, is what gives meaning to the concept of an
“outlaw state”. All this is set aside, however, when we sponsor
mercenaries to mine roads and harbors, destroy crops, assassinate
civilian leaders, recruit an army by kidnapping civilians, with the
intent of overthrowing a legitimate government not of our liking. When
Nicaragua took its case to the World Court, we declared ourselves above
the law, knowing that the verdict would come out against us.

We
tell ourselves that we are the last bastion of human rights in an evil
world, yet we refuse to vote for resolutions in the United Nations
condemning the use of torture and genocide for fear they might be
applied against us and our allies.

The biggest lie of all is
nuclear defense. Nuclear weapons cannot defend us, or anyone else. At 12
Hiroshimas per second it would take 12 hours to use up the world’s
supply of nuclear weapons. The destruction of all life on earth
outweighs the ephemeral interests of any modern nation state.
Sacrificing life on earth for any human purpose is the ultimate act of
insanity. Is there hope for truth in a world where people are more
concerned with orthodoxy than the search for truth, where laziness,
greed and maintenance of power masquerade as conservatism, where
radicalism is considered dangerous and subversive, where people in power
lie boldly and the people of the world’s largest democracy abdicate
their power by remaining willfully ignorant?

Truth involves not
only a search but also a struggle. What can I say? Is there hope? I hope
so! I intend to maintain my hope and to act on it. I urge you to help
bring our hope to fulfillment by not being seduced by laziness or lies,
but by engaging in the struggle for truth.”
- http://www.lcurve.org/writings/SearchForTruth.htm

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