Is There An Objective Truth?
Can we find the truth behind any happening today? Political and commercial pressures have led todays' journalists to reconsider the value and meaning of objectivity. Is there an objective truth?
They experience the shortcomings of their research tools and confront the reality that there is a limit beyond which they cannot explore further. Today the data scientists are in pursuit of the same objective, using big data and various algorithms based on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning to build powerful predictive and prescriptive models.
But I doubt whether even giant players in the field, like Google and Facebook, who are in the core business of analyzing humongous amounts of data are making any progress at all in this direction. They are facing tremendous pressure from the governments and the public alike, to stop the pandemic of rumors, fake news, and hatred in the social media.
Their fascination with big data stems from the myth that from sufficiently large volumes of data, the massive software algorithms can discover the hidden patterns and unravel the truth.
Today we obtain news from print media, broadcast media, and digital media. These outlets are owned by large news organizations and media companies, which have their own corporate objectives and business interests at stake. These news reports become further subjective while being presented by various journalists, columnists, and writers who come with varied backgrounds and interests.
Our ancient treatises, the Vedas, are supposed to reveal the ultimate truth when they proclaim that the Self alone is real and imperishable whereas the 'bodies' of all living beings are perishable. The Self, the supreme spirit pervading the universe, is eternal, indestructible, boundless, imperceptible, permanent, and immortal. But do the Vedas really help in understanding the objective truth?
One of the Vedic texts, Rig-Veda offers this profound thought, in Sanskrit:
So when the wise people perceive the truth differently, doesn't it follow that they also act differently, leading to different consequences and results? And in the process of closing in on the truth, aren't we really diverging from it?
To make things more complicated, take the doctrine of Maya that forms one of the pillars of the Vedanta philosophy. Maya is a fundamental concept in Vedanta and denotes the magic power with which God makes human beings believe in a reality that turns out to be an illusion.
Maya is our memories, conceptions, judgments, and biases that present a distorted sense of reality. Therefore, whether it is using the ancient philosophical wisdom or the modern scientific methods, we are in no position to zero in to the truth.
Or can we only choose from myriad possible realities?
For that matter, does even the grand philosophical works, the ancient Vedic texts, reveal the ultimate truth?
Science and scientists are supposed to unravel the truth of nature. But if you look closely at the frontiers of any branch of science - Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology... - we can see that the leading scientists stand acutely aware of the inherent limitations of science as to what can be known about the mysteries of the universe.
Science and scientists are supposed to unravel the truth of nature. But if you look closely at the frontiers of any branch of science - Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology... - we can see that the leading scientists stand acutely aware of the inherent limitations of science as to what can be known about the mysteries of the universe.
They experience the shortcomings of their research tools and confront the reality that there is a limit beyond which they cannot explore further. Today the data scientists are in pursuit of the same objective, using big data and various algorithms based on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning to build powerful predictive and prescriptive models.
But I doubt whether even giant players in the field, like Google and Facebook, who are in the core business of analyzing humongous amounts of data are making any progress at all in this direction. They are facing tremendous pressure from the governments and the public alike, to stop the pandemic of rumors, fake news, and hatred in the social media.
Their fascination with big data stems from the myth that from sufficiently large volumes of data, the massive software algorithms can discover the hidden patterns and unravel the truth.
Today we obtain news from print media, broadcast media, and digital media. These outlets are owned by large news organizations and media companies, which have their own corporate objectives and business interests at stake. These news reports become further subjective while being presented by various journalists, columnists, and writers who come with varied backgrounds and interests.
Our ancient treatises, the Vedas, are supposed to reveal the ultimate truth when they proclaim that the Self alone is real and imperishable whereas the 'bodies' of all living beings are perishable. The Self, the supreme spirit pervading the universe, is eternal, indestructible, boundless, imperceptible, permanent, and immortal. But do the Vedas really help in understanding the objective truth?
One of the Vedic texts, Rig-Veda offers this profound thought, in Sanskrit:
''Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti''This Upanishadic statement from the yore literally means: “Truth is one, the wise perceive it differently”.
So when the wise people perceive the truth differently, doesn't it follow that they also act differently, leading to different consequences and results? And in the process of closing in on the truth, aren't we really diverging from it?
To make things more complicated, take the doctrine of Maya that forms one of the pillars of the Vedanta philosophy. Maya is a fundamental concept in Vedanta and denotes the magic power with which God makes human beings believe in a reality that turns out to be an illusion.
Maya is our memories, conceptions, judgments, and biases that present a distorted sense of reality. Therefore, whether it is using the ancient philosophical wisdom or the modern scientific methods, we are in no position to zero in to the truth.
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