Idea 26: ‘As if’ thinking
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going to go away.
US singer Elvis Presley
Does truth – or Truth – exist? I really don’t know. Nor does anyone else. What we know and what we believe are two different things.
What is a fact, however, is that when people act as if truth existed and that it was there to be discovered – we never make truth, we find it – the results have been spectacular. I am thinking mainly of science, although the principle applies in other fields.
In other words, the conviction that truth exists ‘out there’ seems to work for us. It is a heuristic tool. From the Greek verb meaning ‘to find’, heuristic applies to something that is in itself unproven or incapable of proof ...
