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All the talk about "truth," and questions of whether Mayr can assert that he knows the truth, are all fascinating to me. I have often wondered if there is such a thing as the "universal truth," and if we can ever access it. I feel that we are very much limited by our own perceptions. There is only so much that we can perceive with our senses. Only so far we can see, only so much that we can hear, and so on. Furthermore, what if there are things out there that are beyond the realm of our senses? We would never know, because we simply do not have the capability to perceive those things. Also, we only use about 10 percent of our brain power. Why is this the case? How can we possibly tap into the rest of it? Why would we have so much more brain power/space than we can actually use? Sorry, this is a bit rambly...

I guess what I'm trying to say is, we only know what our senses and perceptions let us know. Additionally, everyone's senses and perceptions of the world are slightly different. While there are some things that most of us agree on, such as grass is green, and the sky is blue, there are other things that no two humans agree on. For example, when we read Zadie Smith's "On Beauty," no two people in the room had the same interpretation of that text. Granted, textual interpretation is different than merely naming the color of an object, but I can't exactly put my finger on how. Any ideas?

Getting back to science....could the scientific method be a way of finding the "least common denominator" among our perceptions? In other words, could its rigid and precise procedures be a way to "weed out" various differences in our perceptions? Is it a way by which we can all agree that no matter how different our perspectives of the world may be, there are certain "conclusions" we can all draw about our world, based upon observations that are common to all human beings? If so, how reliable are such conclusions, given that we use our senses to reach them?

Finally, could the difference between science and the liberal arts be that the liberal arts celebrates and thrives upon the different ways we pereive the world, whereas science celebrates and thrives upon the similarities of our perceptions and observations?