truth

What can be true or false? Only answers. But the truth or falsity of an answer depends upon the question asked, and questions asked depend upon language. So, that which within one framework of questions is true, may very well be false when considered within an alternate framework. The common man has said, "O vilest of heresies, this heresy of relativism! Surely the scientists speak incontrovertible truth! How can you deny the existence of the fact of the matter!" But this, this is not true relativism, for there are indeed definitive states of affairs, there are events which have occurred and no amount of talk can change their details. In this sense of "fact of the matter," such does exist. But this state of affairs can be stunted and distorted by the sieve of language in a variety of ways, depending upon the perspective from which it is examined, the angle of the shadow. The wise man reminds us: the language of science is still but a language.

language as sieve

The "blooming, buzzing confusion" of which James wrote is a rich, multi-dimensional continuum. However, language manifests itself only in one-dimensional strings of discrete phonemes. When one understands an event as summarized in language, when one reports an event to another through speech, one performs a projection. The utterance is a mere shadow of the event, and as with all shadows, a different perspective, a different angle, might yield a confusingly different shape, even if the event casting them remains "the same." For how can we talk of two contradictory sentences describing the same event, when within language they cannot be reconciled? How to discuss the world beyond language? For language is a sieve, it captures only coarse chunks and unsubtleties of experience and necessarily lets the full richness of detail slip through.