Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

2. Foundations

‘We are theologians in childhood, metaphysical in youth and natural philosophers in virility.’

Auguste Comte — The Foundations of Sociology

It’s a common experience to be in that place of asking whether the world really exists! Both our common-sense view of reality and, for the most part, the scientific view make the assumption of the independent existence of objective reality. Both Einstein and Wittgenstein said that the most amazing thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible — so a very clear sense of explanations and truths is working out there in the world, even whilst truth seems so difficult to pin down. Even the way we frame our questions about the universe may be misleading us about its true nature.

This chapter explores some fundamental questions about the world: How can there be certainty that statements about the world are true? How can it be known that what is true for us is also true for others? How can it be known that the deductions that science makes are true? What makes a scientific theory true or false? Some possible answers to these questions can be summarised as follows:

1. There is an external world, which is

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