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ckosarek's picture

The "Truth" in Categories

 Your post reminded me of another topic that we talked about in Paul's section. In our exploration of what "true" means, we ran into the questions, "What separates science from literature? What makes us take either form as more or less true?" In trying to delineate science and literature by evaluating their relative "truthfulness" and "usefulness", Paul posed the question, "Are the separate categories of 'science' and 'literature' useful?" 

Though we were at a loss to define how, exactly, science and literature differed (both seemed to deal with some form of "truth", both both posed possibilities and eliminated possibilities), none of us were willing to get rid of the separate categories. To us, probably because we are socialized to believe as much, science and literature are somehow fundamentally (but in a way that we are unable to articulate) different

I, too, like having the two categories. I think their usefulness lies in their scope of practical usefulness in reality (whatever reality is). For example, health science affects how we care for ourselves physically. Fiction encourages creativity and the reorganization or strengthening of social schemas. The line between the two disciplines is not clearly drawn, but no binary line ever is (think of the line between "male" and "female" - even that becomes very blurred!). I don't think there's a "truth" in where the line lies, but I do think that having these two separate categories creates separate "truths", each of which finds their own applicability to the world in which we live. 

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