Year Two First HCJ Lecture-Science and Certainty

Science is the search for the truth, you can never know the absolute truth about anything. Kant supported this idea by expressing that you can never possibly know truth but you can always have an honest opinion about what you believe to be the truth. The Universe is ultimately unknowable. This statement can be applied in journalism since you can possibly never know the real truth of a story but you can be honest in what you write.

Kant also believes that the truth can be split up into two categories:

1.  A Priori truth. 'Truths before experience'
2. A Posteriori truth. 'Truths found out through experience so that facts are known.

Before Kant people supported the idea of of 'Mirror theory of the mind'. Plato also shared a similar theory of Forms. Plato believed that though forms of the world existed independently of human consciousness.

The Empiricists Bacon and Newton thought that the Cosmos was the sum total of many things. Some of these things are very remote or very large or small and therefore are difficult to see but they are 'there' as objects whether we can obviously see them or not. Therefore the same theory can be applied to Science just because we can not see microscopic molecules in a material this does not mean that they don't exist. Barclay opposed this view by stating that perception equals existence. No existence if an object has not been seen or witnessed.

Kant's view is that the Cosmos is more like a computer game where the object (space and time) is created in consciousness and then fades away again first into the apparent distance and then disappears entirely again. However, Kant wasn't a pure idealist and therefore didn't believe that objects were really there, but only existed in a Noumenal Form.

Humanity will always have the ability to strive for more, to learn more (this is similar to Nietzsche's 'Will of Power') .

Logic- Deduction vs Induction

1. Inductive logic is moving from a particular proposition.
2. Deductive logic is moving from a  general proposition, usually mathematics and geometry.

Deduction :  

 All things are created.

The Universe is a thing.

Therefore the universe was created.

From Newton to Einstein

The Copernican Revolution in 1543 was the eruption of Science. It was the idea,that is now known as fact, that the Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun.
This created a clash of Science and the traditions.

The Verification principle

The truth of any proposition is the way in which you verify it. Therefore, if a proposition cannot be verified, then it is neither true nor false. Arguably, the verification principle cannot be verified itself.