facts

Climbing Montaigne

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What do we know? Just posing the question is suggestive of something remarkable – of looking to the unknown behind the known with an implicit wisdom that transcends the explicit knowing, with a doubt that makes a mockery of not doubting.

But the moment we stop doubting we stagnate – for ignorance is born of what we think we know, and no certainty is as certain as the desire for the truth to be ours.

And science has found that we can carry on indefinitely, gathering mountains of evidence in support of our pet theories, and still be wrong.

© Mike Laidler 2015

Realisations

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From life to death, science to religion, chance to change, imagination to reality, ignorance to knowledge – the narrow limits that generate facts to focus our attention change within broader limits we know nothing about. For in each case, the narrow limits belong to us, whilst we see them otherwise, as belonging to the facts.

Mike Laidler

Naked Emperors

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Logic and reason and their derivatives in the language of persuasion and explanation, are like naked emperors in the face of truths yet to be revealed, being adorned in the semblance of their own authority, to authorise the facts that authorise them to be right in the meantime – whilst followers rally to the call: ‘Here is the reason for the facts being true’.

Mike Laidler