Perspective and Truth

"The world is seen through human eyes and processed through human minds. Minds that are developed and conditioned by human society.  While the natural world is not a human creation, our descriptions of it and our perceptions of it have to be."

"Imagine a crowd of people standing around and admiring an immense and intricately and beautifully decorated building like the Palace of Versailles. Ask each one of them independently for a description of what they saw."

"It will come as no surprise that each person gives a slightly different description. No two will be identical even though all the people were looking at the same building. Each person will make choices of features of particular interest to him, will see and interpret things according to his own unique mind and dispositions."

"A priest for example might speak most about the chapel and see religious symbolism where others don't. A mathematician might focus on the geometry of the architecture and notice symmetries and proportions which may or may not have been in the mind of the original architect. A gardener might make mention of things nobody noticed, like curious plants growing out of cracks in the wall. You can also be sure that a 19th century group of people would describe it differently from a 21st century group of people."

"So the description of an object is dependent on both the reality of the object - the thing being described, and the societal context of the observer - the thing doing the describing."

There are sometimes things which seem to contradict. If we have the full picture we may find out that all the perspectives are right. Everyone's perception of reality is biased by their own experiences and world view. One view is not necessarily of more or less value than another view. But we should try to understand the viewpoint of others when we try to understand what they are trying to say to us.

Source: The Great Courses - History of Science: Antiquity to 1700