Est. 1993

This is my 1st english assignment lol, supposed to say something about truth. here it is. What a nice sunday afternoon.

All ideas spoken about the objective subject of truth should be made valid. Some viewed truths as absolute, a guideline set by personal morals, cultural standards and traditional practices; others perceived it as relative, a comparison of what is not true, a thought evoked by feelings. When discussing about this topic, it is important to keep an open mind and accept ideas presented by others. Albert North Whitehead, a philosopher and science professor in the early 1900s once said, “There are no whole truths, all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.” Whitehead saw the perceptiveness of the idea of truths throughout this life and spoke out. As a deeper look is taken to analyze the quote, Whitehead also commented on human advancement and told us to speculate.

As an early physicist, Whitehead studied and believed Newtonian physics, a study where all of nature is absolute and follows a set of mathematical rules. These rules described forces that were thought to be grand and constant. The relevance of this detail to the quote can be found near the end of this teaching career, when the famous scientist Albert Einstein proposed the idea of relative physics and quantum mechanics. These theories stated that observations made at the microscopic level of this world are constantly changing; certainties are invalid. It also stated that there were forces that were thousand folds stronger than the supposedly strong gravitational force. As whitehead witnessed the collapse of Newtonian physics, the universal scientific truth that he believed began to wither into half-truths that only applied to some aspect of this universe. This idea of truth put speculation in all things spoken and these speculations helped us find new ideas, new discoveries, and new truths.

At the first glance this quote could be seen as though Whitehead saw no truth in this world and that he was skeptical about all things said. When the quote is analyzed literarily, the first thing that stood out was “play the devil.” This part of the quote came from the idiom “playing the devil’s advocate” which meant to take a side in an argument for the sake of arguing; to find the flaws of the other argument. To put it into context, friends often played the devil’s advocates in decision-making processes so that the best decision at the end after all the pros and cons are weighted. If the quote was personified, the “half-truth” would be the person in a dilemma, and “Making it the truth” would be the devil’s advocate. “Making it the truth” would unveil all the flaws of the half-truth, which led to new theories, new ideas, and new innovations.

Albert Whitehead’s idea of the world was slowly changed from constant to relative. Some things in the world are absolute, but some truths can’t be fully trusted and to be skeptical is the only way that we can find new breakthroughs and to advance as the human race. Even the quote itself begged readers to question itself, how much of this quote speaks the truth?