Dominic Narratieve, an office drone at Dominant Narrative, Inc. walks in to the Coffee Cup, where Bril and RecloySo are discussing the nature of truth.

 

R – Mr. Brutt was my least favorite science teacher because he gave us so little direction.

B – Oh yes, I hated his teaching style quite a lot myself. Though it’s funny, often when it comes to science teachers my biggest complaint is that they’re not even teaching real science.

DN – Oh, so you know the truth as well! I mean, sorry to interrupt, may I sit here?

B – Oh hey Dom, yeah, pull up a chair.

R – What exactly do you mean when you say “truth” just now, Dominic?

DN – Well, RecloySo, perhaps you haven’t heard yet, but many of the things you learned in your middle school science textbooks are in fact false. You know they never landed on the moon right? And of course, they can’t even decide if Pluto is a planet or not! Ha! Typical Scientists. Or should I say, confusion-bots.

R – Ah, Dom, yes, you do seem to have suffered from the lack of real science learning that my sibling mentioned. I am sad that our society has done this to you, and to many others as well.

DN – It’s an outrage!

B – Yes, and for reasons even more sinister than you think. You think you were taught the wrong facts, but really you weren’t taught science.

DN – Wait, but I don’t get it, science is facts.

B – Our school system has encouraged such modes of thought yes, and has taught science as if it is a system of facts which are known with absolute certainty to be true, but that’s not what science is.

R – More focus should be given to the scientific method.

DN – Oh yeah, they mentioned that crap in 6^th grade once. What is it, uh, ask some questions, make a hypothesis, dissect the frog, fill out the teacher’s assignment about where the heart is and junk like that. I mean, I know that’s not all the details, I did get a C in 6^th grade science.

B – Well, grades are a poor measurement in most cases, but that’s a topic for another day.

R – Yeah, Bril, don’t let your ADHD sidetrack you again.

B – yeah, yeah, you see my notebook, you see my ideas bar, I’m saving for many other days to come.

R – See Dominic, the scientific method you were taught likely looked like this: <insert line down scientific method> and it’s likely that it was implied that the scientific method was a road to scientific truths, without clarifying that many scientifically tested things are theories that might be amended when further data becomes available.

B – Yeah, a better way to represent the scientific method would be like this <circular graph> because it’s a process that’s ever evolving and building upon previous work. Science is not the “facts” that we learn in middle school, but rather the process by which we’ve reached these truths.

DN – Ok, I guess your circle graph makes sense, but how does this change anything? I was still taught that Pluto was a planet, and then the scientists just changed their minds??? All science is fake! Scientists are just elites that tell us they’ve filled out a chart so they can tell us what is and isn’t true, but I’m on to their games!

B – If you believe scientists are elites, wouldn’t you want to know how to think like one?

DN – Ooh, I never thought about it that way.

R – But now you are, so congratulations! Your understanding of the world has grown! Did you know that scientists are in fact not some inhuman elite godly being creating the rules of the universe, but rather humans such as yourself or I? Did you know that even scientists’ understanding of the world is constantly growing and changing?

DN – Wait, really?

B – Really Dom! Think back to college, when we were in that intro to literary theory class together before you switched your major to business

DN – Ugh, I hated that class

B – Yes, it wasn’t my favorite class either at the time, but now that some years have passed, I’ve had time to give it more thought, and I’ve encountered a deeper truth that was there to be learned.

DN – A deeper truth?

B – Yes, Dom, I realized last summer that the beauty of academia is that there is a dialogue going on in each discipline. In intro to Literary Theories we were simply shown the doorways into several different frameworks used by those who study literature. And, you know what’s even more exciting?

DN – What’s that?

B – Even as an undergraduate English major, I got to not only observe this dialogue happening, but also actively take part in it!

DN – Wow, I guess when you put it that way, being an English major does sound more exciting.

R – Yes, and this is true not only of English as a discipline, but is something to be found in all higher learning. Facts are never simply facts, but rather an agreement reached through dialogue.

DN – But, that means that Anything I know could be a lie!

B – I wouldn’t say a lie, but yes, anything that you think you know could in fact be a misunderstanding. I believe that if our society is given the chance to continue to flourish, one day everything I know will be just as antiquated as the belief that the earth is the center of the universe.

R – You mentioned Pluto earlier, and that is a great example. When we were in elementary school learning the order of the planets, it was considered a fact that Pluto was a planet.

B – Yes, and that’s an understanding of our solar system that has evolved as astronomers compile more data and realize that it makes more sense to group Pluto with these other objects in space we now call dwarf planets.

DN – Why did I even bother learning all these fake facts!!!!

B – To have a starting point to discover even deeper understandings of the world. Think of a “fact” like a bite sized morsel, each one is not the cake, but you can’t eat the cake all at once, so you have to take bites. And once you’ve eaten enough cake, you might be inspired to experiment and find an even better recipe.

R – The cake is a lie, but only because we will continue to discover ways to make ever better cakes!

DN – It’s like, the things I knew were mostly probably right, but only for now, and everything I understood about how we decide what is and isn’t a fact is wrong. I’m so disoriented.

R – Good, it’s our reliance of the false sense of stability facts afford us that makes us so susceptible to manipulation in these times.

B – You’ve just learned that some of the who’s and the what’s you learned by rote, while still true in the sense that we haven’t found a more logical explanation to agree upon yet, are not the be-all end-all of truth.

DN – So what do I do now?

B – Start paying more attention to the actual questions: the how’s and the why’s. Answering those questions will give you a much more stable foundation in knowing the who’s and what’s of the world.

DN – Thanks, I think. Well, I’ve taken enough time on my break, I’d better head back up to work now.

B – Alright Dom, it’s been nice chatting about the nature of truth.

*Dom leaves the coffee shop

R – Oh no, he left his book.

B – “Fake News, Climate Change and Other Lies by Scientists,” I’ll see him again, so I can hold onto it for him.

R – I didn’t know Dom was a Climate Change denier….

B – He wasn’t in college, so perhaps with the right tools we can still save him from the Tangerine’s Men.

R – He’s in more danger than I realized.

B – Aren’t we all these days.