Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

How to Live

Owl's picture

I feel as though stories, although not the same for everyone or everything in life, create pictures that attempt to describe that person or thing. That picture may not be exact and it may not describe in full what truth is; but it will at least give us an image to begin to learn how to interact with other life forms. I agree with Sagan that skepticism is the way to go, and aside from the fact that he was not so skeptical about science himself, I think there is 'use value' to his idea of skepticism. Whether it be science or narrative, we should always be skeptical, for there is never ONE true and irrefutable way of seeing things. Science and stories go hand in hand in trying to evaluate the way we work or do not work together as people of such diverse experiences. I say experience, because I believe that experience is the stuff of what we create in search of truth. I believe that the reasons why we should be skeptical about what we believe in or what we call fact, is because there is no possible way that a fact is unbiased. One cannot remove oneself from the products they create, whether it be a scientist who produces what she or he believes to be fact, or a person behind a story they produce; for both are human, and as human, develop in a social world that thereof mold their ways of thinking and give them different agendas for pursuing and producing what they do.   

I feel as though the one thing that we should be the most skeptical of however, is that which categorizes stories and science into what we argue are their faults. If we didn't categorize science as non-fiction and stories as fiction than we wouldn't have a problem. Now, I could be wrong  or I could be closer to a truth, either way I think this is one question I wouldn't mind pursuing further.

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
5 + 1 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.