ONETRUTH & BEAUTY
Aesthetics in life and in the cosmos
Since antiquity, the subjects of truth and beauty have occupied the thoughts of our deepest thinkers—especially the minds of philosophers and theologians and the occasional poet such as John Keats, who observes within his 1819 poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:1
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
What might these subjects look like to visiting aliens who have crossed the galaxy to visit us? They will have none of our biases. None of our preferences. None of our preconceived notions. They would offer a fresh look at what we value as humans. They might even notice that the very concept of truth on Earth is fraught with conflicting ideologies, in desperate need of scientific objectivity.
Endowed by methods and tools of inquiry refined over the centuries, scientists may be the exclusive discoverers of what is objectively true in the universe. Objective truths apply to all people, places, and things, as well as all animals, vegetables, and minerals. Some of these truths apply across all of space and time. They are true even when you don’t believe in them.
Objective truths don’t come from any seated authority, nor from any single research paper. The press, in an attempt to break a story, may mislead the public’s awareness of how science works by headlining a just-published scientific paper as the truth, perhaps also touting the academic pedigrees of the authors. When drawn from the frontier of thought, the truth still churns. Research can wander until experiments converge in one direction or another—or in no direction, a warning flag of no phenomenon at all. These crucial checks and balances commonly take years, which hardly ever counts as “breaking news.”
Objective truths, established by repeated experiments that give consistent results, are not later found to be false. No need to revisit the question of whether Earth is round; whether the Sun is hot; whether humans and chimps share more than 98 percent identical DNA; or whether the air we breathe is 78 percent nitrogen. The era of “modern physics,” born with the quantum revolution of the early twentieth century and the relativity revolution of around the same time, did not discard Newton’s laws of motion and gravity. Instead, it described deeper realities of nature, made visible by ever-greater methods and tools of inquiry. Like a matryoshka nesting doll, modern physics enclosed classical physics within these larger truths. The only times science cannot assure objective truths is on the pre-consensus frontier of research. The only era in which science could not assure objective truths was before the seventeenth century, back when our senses—inadequate and biased—were the only tools at our disposal to inform us of the natural world. Objective truths exist independent of that five-sense perception of reality. With proper tools, they can be verified by anybody, at any time, and at any place.
Objective truths of science are not founded in belief systems. They are not established by the authority of leaders or the power of persuasion. Nor are they learned from repetition or gleaned from magical thinking. To deny objective truths is to be scientifically illiterate, not to be ideologically principled.
After all that, you’d think only one definition for truth should exist in this world, but no. At least two other kinds prevail that drive some of the most beautiful and the most violent expressions of human conduct. Personal truths have the power to command your mind, body, and soul, but are not evidence-based. Personal truths are what you’re sure is true, even if you can’t—especially if you can’t—prove it. Some of these ideas derive from what you want to be true. Others take shape from charismatic leaders or sacred doctrines, either ancient or contemporary. For some, especially in monotheistic traditions, God and Truth are synonymous. The Christian Bible says so:2
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Personal truths are what you may hold dear but have no real way of convincing others who disagree, except by heated argument, coercion, or force. These are the foundations of most people’s opinions and are normally harmless when kept to yourself or argued over a beer. Is Jesus your savior? Did Muhammad serve as God’s last prophet on Earth? Should the government support poor people? Are current immigration laws too tight or too loose? Is Beyoncé your Queen? In the Star Trek universe, which captain are you? Kirk or Picard—or Janeway?
Differences in opinion enrich the diversity of a nation, and ought to be cherished and respected in any free society, provided everyone remains free to disagree with one another and, most importantly, everyone remains open to rational arguments that could change your mind. Sadly, the conduct of many in social media has devolved to the opposite of this. Their recipe: find an opinion they disagree with and unleash waves of anger and outrage because your views do not agree with theirs. Social, political, or legislative attempts to require that everybody agree with your personal truths are ultimately dictatorships.
Among wine aficionados, there’s the Latin expression, “In vino veritas,” which translates to “In wine there is truth.” Audacious for a beverage that contains 12 to 14 percent ethanol, a molecule that disrupts brain function and (irrelevantly) happens to be common in interstellar space. The epigram nonetheless implies that a group of people drinking wine will find themselves, unprompted, being calmly truthful with one another. Maybe that happens at some level with other alcoholic beverages. Even so, vanishingly few of us have ever seen a bar fight break out between two people drinking wine. Gin, maybe. Whisky, definitely. Chardonnay, no. Imagine the absurdity of such a line in a movie script: “I’m going to kick your ass, but only after I’m done sipping my Merlot!” The same incredulous claim can probably be said of marijuana. Smoking dens don’t tend to be the places where fights break out. Supportive evidence, if cinematically anecdotal, that honest truth can breed understanding and reconciliation. Maybe that’s because honesty is better than dishonesty, and truths are more beautiful than untruths.
Far beyond wine truths, and close cousins of personal truths, are political truths. These thoughts and ideas already resonate with your feelings but become unassailable truths from incessant repetition by forces of media that would have you believe them—a fundamental feature of propaganda. Such belief systems almost always insinuate or explicitly declare that who you are, or what you do, or how you do it, is superior to those you want to subjugate or conquer. It’s no secret that people will give their lives, or take the lives of others, in support of what they believe. Often the less actual evidence that exists in support of an ideology, the more likely a person is willing to die for the cause. Aryan Germans of the 1930s weren’t born thinking they were the master race to all other people in the world. They had to be indoctrinated. And they were. By an efficient, lubricated political machine. By 1939 and the start of World War II, millions were ready to die for it—and did.
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The aesthetics of what is beautiful and desired in culture typically shifts from season to season, year to year, and from generation to generation, especially regarding fashion, art, architecture, and the human body. Based on the size of the cosmetics industry and the larger beauty industrial complex, visiting space aliens would surely think that we think we are ugly beyond repair, in persistent need of “improvements.” We’ve designed household tools to straighten curly hair and to curl straight hair. We invented methods to replace missing hair and to remove unwanted hair. We use chemical dyes to darken light hair and to lighten dark hair. We don’t tolerate acne or skin blemishes of any kind. We wear shoes that make us taller and perfumes that make us smell better. We use makeup to accentuate the good and suppress the bad elements of our appearance. In the end, there’s not much real about our appearance. The beauty we’ve created is not even skin-deep. It washes off in the shower.
That which is objectively true or honestly authentic—especially on Earth or in the heavens—tends to possess a beauty of its own that transcends time, place, and culture. Sunsets remain mesmerizing, even though you get one every day. Beautiful as they are, we also know all about the thermonuclear energy sources in the Sun’s core. We know about the tortuous journey of its photons as they climb out of the Sun. We know of their swift journey across space, until they refract through Earth’s atmosphere, en route to my eye’s retina. The brain then processes and “sees” the image of a sunset. These added facts—these scientific truths—have the power to deepen whatever meaning we may otherwise ascribe to nature’s beauty.
Copyright © 2022 by Neil deGrasse Tyson
