[分享] Science & Truth!

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Hi guys,
Because I've been too rushing to edit this passage transferrer from other unknown sources, so please excuse me for this rugged style.  

Introduction:
Descartes: 笛卡儿，法国哲学家及数学家。


1）
In contrast to the medieval world view, the scientific universe is impersonal, governed by natural laws and understandable in physical and mathematical terms. Many people trust the information science offers rather than religion because science seems to be more reliable. Science has replaced religion as the dominant intellectual authority because science offers the chance to understand the universe, whereas religion just assumes things. Many believe, as was said by Richard Dawkins, the truth means scientific truth? Along with the logical Positivists, they claimed the only meaningful statements were scientific. It is unfortunate that such a view is seen by so many as it takes more than one view to understand the universe fully. Non-religious philosopher, Bertrand Russell, once quoted another example of the narrow-minded view non-Christians seem to share, he once said, that science cannot discover, mankind cannot know? Although science explains much about life and the universe, some people choose to believe religion.

One major reason for the contrast in views is the difference of interpretations of the Bible. Extreme Christians take the story of Genesis purely literally and believe God created the world in six days, leaving no room for the arguments of science. Others still believe in the story of Genesis but that instead of six days, six periods of time. Others, however, completely reject Christianity.


2）
In the Meditations, Descartes embarks upon what Bernard Williams has
called the project of 'Pure Enquiry' to discover certain, indubitable foundations for knowledge. By subjecting everything to doubt Descartes hoped to discover whatever was immune to it. In order to best understand how and why Descartes builds his epistemological system up from his foundations in the way that he does, it is helpful to gain an understanding of the intellectual background of the
17th century that provided the motivation for his work.

We can discern three distinct influences on Descartes, three conflicting
world-views that fought for prominence in his day. The first was what remained of the mediaeval scholastic philosophy, largely based on Aristotelian science and Christian theology. Descartes had been taught according to this outlook during his time at the Jesuit college La Flech, and it had an important influence on his work, as we shall see later. The second was the skepticism that had made a
sudden impact on the intellectual world, mainly as a reaction to the scholastic outlook. This skepticism was strongly influenced by the work of the Pyrrhonians as handed down from antiquity by Sextus Empiricus, which claimed that, as
there is never a reason to believe p that is better than a reason not to believe p, we should forget about trying to discover the nature of reality and live by appearance alone. This attitude was best exemplified in the work of Michel de Montaigne, who mockingly dismissed the attempts of theologians and scientists to understand the nature of God and the universe respectively. Descartes felt
the force of skeptical arguments and, while not being skeptically disposed himself, came to believe that skepticism towards knowledge was the best way to discover what is certain: by applying skeptical doubt to all our beliefs, we can discover which of them are indubitable, and thus form an adequate foundation for knowledge. The third world-view resulted largely from the work of the new scientists; Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon et al. Science had finally begun to assert
itself and shake off its dated Aristotelian prejudices. Coherent theories about the world and its place in the universe were being constructed and many of those who were aware of this work became very optimistic about the influence it could have. Descartes was a child of the scientific revolution, but felt that until skeptical concerns were dealt with, science would always have to contend with
Montaigne and his cronies, standing on the sidelines and laughing at science's pretenses to knowledge. Descartes' project, then, was to use the tools of the skeptic to disprove the skeptical thesis by discovering certain knowledge that could subsequently be used as the foundation of a new science, inwhich knowledge about the external world was as certain as knowledge about mathematics. It was also to hammer the last nail into the coffin of scholasticism, but also, arguably, to show that God still had a vital re to play in the discovery of knowledge.

Meditation One describes Descartes' method of doubt. By its conclusion, Descartes has seemingly subjected all of his beliefs to the strongest and most hyperbolic of doubts. He invokes the nightmarish notion of an all-powerful, malign demon who could be deceiving him in the realm of sensory experience, in his very understanding of matter and even in the simplest access of mathematical or logical truths. The doubts may be obscure, but this is the strength of the method - the weakness of criteria for what makes a doubt reasonable means that almost anything can count as a doubt, and therefore whatever withstands doubt must be something epistemologically.


3）"We are, then, faced with a quite simple alternative: Either we deny that there is here anything that can be called truth - a choice that would make us deny what we experience most profoundly as our own being; or we must look beyond the realm of our "natural" experience for a validation of our certainty."
A famous philosopher, Rene Descartes, once stated, "I am, [therefore] I exist." This statement holds the only truth found for certain in our "natural" experience that, as conscious beings, we exist. Whether we are our own creators, a creation, or the object of evolution, just as long as we believe that we think, we are proved to exist. Thinking about our thoughts is an automatic validation of our self-consciousness. Descartes claims, "But certainly I should exist, if I were to persuade my self of something." And so, I should conclude that our existence is a truth, and may be the only truth, that we should find its certainty.

From the "natural" experiences of our being, we hold beliefs that we find are our personal truths. From these experiences, we have learned to understand life with reason and logic; we have established our idea of reality; and we believe that true perceptions are what we sense and see. But it is our sense of reason and logic, our idea of reality, and our perceptions, that may likely to be very wrong. Subjectiveness, or personal belief, is almost always, liable for self-contradiction. Besides the established truth that we exist, there are no other truths that are certain, for the fact that subjective truth may be easily refuted. Every person possesses his or her own truth that may be contradicting to another person’s belief. A truth, or one that is true for all, cannot by achieved because of the constant motion of circumstances of who said it, to whom, when, where, why, and how it was said.

What one person may believe a dog is a man’s best friend, another may believe that a dog is a man’s worse enemy. What one may believe is a pencil, to another is not a pencil, but a hair pin. Where one may believe that a bottle is an instrument, one may believe is a toy, where another may believe is a beverage container. Where one will understand the moving vehicle "car," one might understand "car" as a tree. Our perception of what is true depends on our own experiences, and how something becomes true for us. Many circumstances are necessary to derive at one’s truth, whether it is an idea, object, or language. All perception, besides the perception of existence, is uncertain of being true for
all individuals. Every thought, besides the idea that we think, has the possibility that it may be proven wrong. The author of the article, Knowledge Regained, Norman Malcolm, states that, "any empirical proposition whatever could be refuted by future experience - that is, it could turn out to be false." An example could be the early idea of the earth being flat and not the
current perceivably round.”