What we believe but cannont prove
Aug. 24th, 2006 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apparentparadoxI'm reading a book called "What we believe but cannot prove". It's pretty interesting. They basically asked that question of a group of people the editor(s) thought were leading scientists & thinkers. Some of the answers are pretty thought-provoking.
One person basically writes that she doesn't believe anything to be true if it cannot be proven. That strikes me as being an incredibly sad way to view life. In the first place, there are many things that I believe that cannot be proven. I guess for me, I don't work very hard at convincing others of those things that cannot be proven, whereas those things that can be proven, I might actually try to convince someone else to change their mind. (Although, I do try to remember that what I consider that nothing can really be proven -- I might be a computer program that started running just a millisecond ago, with false memories implanted) In the second place, I think that only believing in things that can be proven shows a severely limited imagination. Can't this person even conceive that there are things that the human brain can not prove or understand, which doesn't affect whether those things are true? Can't this person imagine that this whole world she believes is just a dream of some entity somewhere, and that entity may wake up at some point in the future?
I really liked one guy who started off with the whole Descartes bit about how you can really only prove that you exist (the whole "I think therefore I am" argument which only proves that there is something that is pondering the question, and by convention you could call that thing-that-is-thinking "I"), and he went on to talk about how it's difficult to prove anything (since it might all be imaginings). He ends his essay very well:
Some of the people believe in God, others believe that there is no God. Some believe in existence after death, while others don't. All in all, it's a well-written, thought-provoking book, and I highly recommend it.
One person basically writes that she doesn't believe anything to be true if it cannot be proven. That strikes me as being an incredibly sad way to view life. In the first place, there are many things that I believe that cannot be proven. I guess for me, I don't work very hard at convincing others of those things that cannot be proven, whereas those things that can be proven, I might actually try to convince someone else to change their mind. (Although, I do try to remember that what I consider that nothing can really be proven -- I might be a computer program that started running just a millisecond ago, with false memories implanted) In the second place, I think that only believing in things that can be proven shows a severely limited imagination. Can't this person even conceive that there are things that the human brain can not prove or understand, which doesn't affect whether those things are true? Can't this person imagine that this whole world she believes is just a dream of some entity somewhere, and that entity may wake up at some point in the future?
I really liked one guy who started off with the whole Descartes bit about how you can really only prove that you exist (the whole "I think therefore I am" argument which only proves that there is something that is pondering the question, and by convention you could call that thing-that-is-thinking "I"), and he went on to talk about how it's difficult to prove anything (since it might all be imaginings). He ends his essay very well:
...I could give any number of specific mathematical problems that I believe are true
but cannot prove, starting with the famous Riemann hypothesis. But I think I can be of
more use by using my mathematician's perspective to point out the uncertainties in the
idea of proof. Which I believe (but cannot prove) I have.Some of the people believe in God, others believe that there is no God. Some believe in existence after death, while others don't. All in all, it's a well-written, thought-provoking book, and I highly recommend it.