My philosopher-dentist Mathai, while working on my wisdom tooth, suddenly asked me, “What is the difference between truth and fact?” I had no answer then, but as I left his clinic, thoughts kept flooding my mind. The two main ones were the story of the blind men and the elephant, where each having touched one part of the animal could perceive only a part of the reality. The other was Akira Kurosawa’s film ‘Roshomon’, in which witnesses at the scene of a Samurai’s murder give completely contradictory versions of the event.
Legal professionals and policemen are confronted by this all the time and are supposed to be trained to ask for more facts, data and versions in order to piece together a cohesive picture. Despite much data, the case may remain insoluble. In the court, the oath is, to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ This is because there could be partial truths. Tennyson wrote that a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, but a lie which is part truth is harder to fight.
In criminal investigation there is a demand for corroboration, to provide evidence that would prove any statement or alibi to be correct. A Persian saying narrates that when a wolf was asked who his witness was, he responded, ‘my tail’.
In the struggle between truth and fact, it is often truth that is in danger of being compromised. In Vaclav Havel’s opinion, this leads to circumstances where ideology has utterly terrorised the truth. This could happen in two cases. One, where facts are rigged to fit pre-conceived ideas to form an elegantly fabricated picture; the other, is where eyes and ears are deliberately shut to facts – as when the close-minded succumb to the seduction of certainty, without ever being ready to revise perceptions even if all evidence to the contrary were presented.
We frequently witness, on TV debates, a persistent my-facts-are-better-than-your-facts syndrome, even when data or full information is unavailable and all that people are doing is projecting and protecting a stance – a clear case of the ‘lie that argues with reality’. Or as Giordano Bruno puts it: ‘If it is not true, it is very well invented’.
The wise often caution: Study how inferences are legitimately derived so that you avoid drawing unfounded conclusions. Continue to test the hard surfaces of appearances for signs of underlying truths. One implication is not to go by word of mouth only. Difficult as it is to try to say it as it is, don’t filter it through your biases. And be aware that our senses are often misled by distortions of reality. Trust, but verify.
The Indian tradition offers two frames of reference-paramarthika, absolute-eternal, non-dual satyam, that is Advaita, and vyavaharika, relative truth, Dvaita, in flux, illusory maya of the samsara which is sustained by the ego-sponsored worldview.
