Humans' Greatest Discovery: Evidential Truth as History, Science, and Education

The world is now going through a particularly difficult time with the truth about reality. (Of course this has happened throughout our history, but now it is particularly blatant). Truth is being trivialized and even abandoned by people who were once thought to be rational beings. At this time, it is important to look at the historical struggles of humans to find and articulate evidential truth, to see how miraculous it has been as a survival tool for our species and especially how important it will be for our future.

The greatest discovery of humans is evidential truth. After the discovery of language and its use in thought, humans eventually noticed that thought and discourse could be incorrect--accidentally or intentionally. To recoup language and thought as pointers to reality, we came up with the idea of truth as correspondence to the real world. We then realized that evidence and logic were the main supports of that correspondence. We recognized that reality is not freeform, but has definite laws and material architecture that we need to honor to survive and prosper. Thus was born evidential truth.

Over millennia, we discovered science as the most dependable type of evidential truth, but our love affair with it has caused us to overlook its limitations. The opposite occurred with history: we never took it as seriously as science but should now realize how important knowing the truth about the past is. Humans developed education to pass on the "truths" of culture and civilization, including history and science, but from the beginning vested interests have constrained the truth in curriculum and pedagogy.

So now that truth is being wantonly cast aside in our politics and lifestyles, we need to re-educate ourselves about the incredible importance of evidential truth in our history and in our future survival. The loss of the understanding and respect for truth will be more destructive than the loss of democracy, science, or any existing social tradition. This book was written to begin that understanding.