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© Karl Simpson
 

 The nature of truth

Truth, it must be for ... I read it in a book. And too many of us, much in awe of the written word, take that as final, a full stop, absolute truth - if it is written in a book by eminent scientists. But truth may evolve. In an encyclopaedia dated 1930 or thereabouts this was brought home to me. The origin of Earth - of life - then had a different perspective. James Jeans' cigar of disrupted sun turned into planets - in 1930. Today we "know" the planets are a product of an evolving circumsolar disk. Or so our telescopes would have us believe, although tomorrow that truth may change.

Tomorrow, you may know that, what you know is not what there is to know, but what you think now there is to know. Knowing is absolute - we come back to that. I know … many things. You can't chop words like that just to confuse. I am me, I know that. This is my flesh, I know that. We are talking about things we cannot know (unless you have walked on the moon), stars and planets. What are they to me?

Again, how can anyone claim absolutes? My reality is real to me. In that purely subjective light OK, I know. But consider this. What do you know? What makes you think you are real? What makes any phenomenon knowable?

You go back to the traditional questions. If a tree falls in a forest where there is no ear to hear, does it make a noise? Clearly science can answer "of course" and support this assertion with any number of physical proofs. But "physical proofs" is the key.

Can we trust our physical proofs? We take so much on faith, from Newton's laws to God.

The filter for all of this is human perception. Your perception, that of each and every individual among you, is yours alone. Each physical event is interpreted as your senses and brain respond. Much of what we experience in society is driven firstly by perceptions: stock market cycles, dot.coms are the thing to buy. And perhaps secondarily by facts: biotech company X has a product which eliminates melanoma, as established by a clinical trial involving 300 patients.

Are we all different?

Clearly there is much that is common, but at the end of the day, we are truly lost in our own individuality. One aspect of our search for humanity is the building of bridges to others, so to create a basis for understanding more which may be common.

So what can I know? I must trust what I read. I must have faith. Consider this.

I know that the ozone hole is caused by stratospheric degradation - caused by a chain reaction initiated by chloro-fluoro-carbons (CFCs) released by aerosol propellants and baths used to wash chips (the electronic sort!) - and so on.

Or rather, that is what I used to know. Trained scientist that I am, I had fallen into the trap I so often criticise others for falling into. I read it in a book, and in numerous newspapers, scientific journals and even my children's books. I didn't think to regard the data critically.

Now I know there is a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer and I know it has been getting bigger since we first noticed it some years ago(1). I believe that and see no reason for doubting. Equally I am prepared to believe that it is getting bigger less fast than five years ago.

Quite separately, I think it is a good thing not to put un-natural things into the atmosphere. So I am against CFC usage in hair spray. Why take risks? Like millions of others I took the evidence presented of a correlation between CFCs and ozone depletion as gospel. And even today I believe that the theory is probably half right - as implied by the slowing rate of growth of the hole.

However, in the early 90s I was offered a copy of a journal entitled Fusion, published by the Fondation pour l'Energie de Fusion in Paris. That issue included an article on a biotechnology company, but then I was drawn to an article entitled "Trou d'ozone : la fin d'un mythe"(Ozone hole - end of a myth -2).

According to the authors, staff at the French Antarctic research station, Dumont d'Urville, had carried out atmospheric studies in the 1950s and 1960s. Recently, ozone chemist Dr Pierre Rigaud decided to look up the archives in Paris. He found a complete set of spectrographic data from 1958 to 1962. To the amazement of Rigaud, the data confirmed an ozone hole over the Antarctic in September 1958. Rigaud's controversial data were clearly counter to the prevailing wind of political expedience!

And this may have been the cause of some initial difficulty in finding a journal to publish his data (eventually he succeeded - 3). Now I am not convinced that Rigaud's data - or his interpretation thereof - are right, but they served to unsettle my facile acceptance of a dogma. The Fusion article went on to explore a number of other explanations for the ozone hole. Volcanic activity, it seemed, was a possible explanation. Mount Erebus, an Antarctic volcano, injects about 1200 tonnes of HCl (hydrochloric acid)and 480 tonnes of HF (hydrofluoric acid) per day when in eruption!

On a similar global theme I was just warming to the possibility that global warming is real when I read The Economist in November 1991 to find an article entitled "The sun and the climate"(4). Now two Danish scientists writing in Science, Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen and Dr Knud Lassen, had apparently explained everything away by periodic changes in solar brightness. The graphical data showed astoundingly good correlation of solar brightness with mean measured land surface temperature in the northern hemisphere. The facts do not change, but they rather diminish our role in the warming we see.

Since the early 1990s global change has become the most politicised of themes, yet for all the sound and fury, little by way of absolute fact has emerged to sustain the credibility of any particular theory. We have a plethora of truths or partial truths which suggest ... but no more.

Two weeks ago I referred to the precautionary principle. Precaution is sensible when not to act might prevent a disaster - as with not using CFC-based aerosols. But when we are confronted with very real needs - like efficient power management in California, precaution must give way to common sense. California needs atomic power to supply its energy needs. Equally, genetic engineering of food plants may alleviate the risk of regional starvation by stabilising food supply in growing areas affected by insect pests (one way to do it, see - 5). Vaccines save lives, but a vanishingly small number of adverse events can place whole populations at risk by undermining confidence and disrupting the universal vaccination that offers herd protection to those view who are not vaccinated (typically more than 90% of a population must be vaccinated if herd protection is to work - see 6)

And so what has this got to do with my philosophy? As you wish, dear reader. Technology is being urged upon us as one of the cure-alls for mysterious global change, I feel it is incumbent upon the practitioners of our art and those dependent upon them to seek a full critical evaluation of data which have profound geo-political consequences. The comments above prove or disprove nothing - but they do raise questions.

1. Farman et al, writing in the journal Nature Vol 315, page 207 (1986)

2. Maduro R and Grenier E, Fusion, No 36, Mars-Avril-Mai, page 22 (1991)

3. Rigaud P and Leroy B, Annales Geophysicae, November issue, page 791 (1990)

4. Science and Technology, The Economist, Vol 321, Number 7735, page 88 (1991)

5. De Cosa et al, Nature Biotechnology, Vol 19, page 71 (2001)

6. Leader article, The Economist, Vol 358, Number 8206, page 20 (2001)