Words&Dirt

“A society that chiefly esteems order, that finds growth painful and change disturbing, inevitably seeks for a fixed body of superior truths upon which it may depend.  It looks backward, to something already in existence, for the source and sanction of truth.  It falls back upon what is antecedent, prior, original, a priori, for assurance.  The thought of looking ahead, toward the eventual, toward consequences, creates uneasiness and fear.  It disturbs the sense of rest that is attached to the ideas of fixed Truth already in existence.  It puts a heavy burden of responsibility upon us for search, unremitting observation, scrupulous development of hypotheses and thoroughgoing testing.  In physical matters men have slowly grown accustomed in all specific beliefs to identifying the true with the verified.  But they still hesitate to recognize the implication of this identification and to derive the definition of truth from it.  For while it is nominally agreed upon as a commonplace that definitions ought to spring from concrete and specific causes rather than be invented in the empty air and imposed upon particulars, there is a strange unwillingness to act upon the maxim in defining truth.  To generalize the recognition that the true means the verified and means nothing else places upon men the responsibility for surrendering political and moral dogmas, and subjecting to the test of consequences their most cherished prejudices.  Such a change involves a great change in the seat of authority and the methods of decision in society.”

––Reconstruction in Philosophy, by John Dewey, pg. 159-60

“‘Who won the war?’

Paul put his fists on his hips and his eyes narrowed.  ‘You’re kidding!  You mean you really don’t know?’

‘No.  I don’t know.  Nobody knows.  Nobody’s told us.’

‘We won it.  We really clobbered ’em!’  Hart’s eyes lowered and his arms drooped.  He said, ‘Not that it matters.'”

––Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank, pg. 316