At the time of writing (February 2023), the TasteAtlas food website has just released their compilation of the “100 Best Rated Cheeses in the World”. A total of 8 Italian cheeses made it into the top 10. Unsurprisingly, this verdict sent the French cuisine into a meltdown. Sacre bleu! The first French fromage appears in the 13th spot. Camembert lovers will be interested to know that their favourite was ranked 91 out of 100.
This is an obvious example of ‘true for me’, or in this case it is the truth for a group of cheese lovers who shared their preferences on the TasteAtlas website. Nobody seriously believes that Parmigiano Reggiano, which made it to number one, really is the best cheese in the world, not even the cheesemakers in the Italian province of Parma, although you can bet that they will use this ‘fact’ in their marketing campaigns. You can’t blame them for that.
So, it seems that we can’t get to any absolute truth in matters of food tasting. The same will apply to our sense of smell, put to test in any perfume competition. What about our hearing? Physics can tell us why certain chords sound pleasant to our ears, whereas others sound unpleasant, but there is no ranking of musical compositions according to their beauty. At least not one we all agree on. The same goes for moral truth. Torturing of babies is reprehensible. We all agree on this truth, but all the discussions raging on animal cloning, designer babies, euthanasia, death penalty, etc. tell us that there is no universally accepted truth on these topics.
The quest for absolute truth, Truth with a capital ‘T’, has kept philosophers busy for millennia. Probably the best-known example is the French philosopher René Descartes in the 17th century. In his search for absolute certainty he argued that his senses could fool him (as they have done many times in the past), or he may well be dreaming, or some evil spirit might be trying to deceive him. But of one thing he can be absolutely certain about: He exists. He reasoned that because he is thinking, he can conclude that he must exist. In French “Je pense, donc je suis”, or he might have said it in Latin “cogito ergo sum”. Latin manages to express it in three words only. Also note that I used here ‘certainty’ instead of ‘truth’. But that’s ok in this context.
Descartes was one of the so-called Rationalists amongst the philosophers. He was happy to sit in a warm quiet room, in a comfortable chair, and contemplate on how to get to some absolute certainty, just through thinking alone. He set himself a very high bar. Can we get to some absolute truth, despite our frail senses that might deceive us? Yes, thankfully, we can declare certain things as absolutes. But we need to restrict ourselves to the physical world around us. And how do we get to these absolute certainties? It is through science. Science can tell us what is universally true, and what is false. A simple example: we live on a planet going around the sun. The statement ‘the sun goes around the earth’ is false. Philosophers will tell you that science does not give us absolute certainties. We’ll discuss that when we look at scientific facts and scientific theories. But for now, don’t listen to the philosophers. They question everything. That’s their job. Note that there is another discipline which gives us absolute certainty – mathematics. Seven is a prime number, that is an absolute truth. But it doesn’t tell us anything about the physical universe.