Do good explanations have to be true?

Many would argue that it is not necessary for every explanation to be true in order to be good; this is because it is possible to employ simpler explanations for certain arguments, which allow for a wider range of people to understand the topic of discussion, possibly, however, at the cost of having some flaws. Indeed, others would argue that an explanation which is not true is omitting some details, and therefore we would be missing out on important information, possibly leading to incomplete knowledge. Furthermore, the essay title question contains the assumption that everyone sees the “truth” in the same way: I see truth as being a description of what is actually real rather than what is assumed to be real, however the line between concrete and abstract is blurred. A question is evident: given several explanations, how can it be decided which is the most truthful one?

This essay focuses on exploring mainly two Areas of knowledge people use to shape their understanding of the world: Natural Sciences and Religious Knowledge Systems. This essay focuses on the different takes on knowledge offered by both Areas of Knowledge as well as on their compatibility.

To what extent should an explanation be true in order to allow for good understanding? Measurements about any quantity in the Natural Sciences, such as Physics, do not lead us to know the truth about our surroundings. In IB Physics lessons, there was an introduction to experimental uncertainty in measurements, which tells us that the results we have for a particular quantity are subject to some degree of inaccuracy. Further, in the quantum mechanical world, there is a fundamental uncertainty associated with any quantity, known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This entails that some explanations, such as scientific theories, which may have a consensus of being “good”, are not completely true. If all experiments in science have uncertainty, how can we obtain the truth? How do we know our theories are good? An acceptable degree of accuracy in measurements in the Natural Sciences is dependent on our own ability to reason, and a compromise must be reached between a sensible measurement and a reasonable uncertainty associated with it. It is the case with many measurements that their uncertainty is small, even negligible to our own senses, and it is possible to draw accurate conclusions. Therefore, it can be said that even though the possibility of producing absolutely true explanations and measurements is precluded by nature in the Natural Sciences, these limits are usually so small that we can simplify our arguments, allowing for good explanations of the world around us. For example, in transistors, an explanation as to why it is impossible to reduce the barrier between the source and the drain so as to stop a current is due to electrons quantum tunnelling– a phenomenon perfectly explained by the Uncertainty Principle. The implication is that we do know that the transistor wouldn’t work; hence, this is an example of a good explanation because it is true. Nevertheless, whether or not an explanation needs to be true in order to be good may also depend on how negligible the false aspects of it are to our senses– if they cannot be detected, it may be the case that good explanations must not be necessarily true, and vice versa. However, this begs us to question: how can we decide which aspects to believe in will be most relevant to the final explanation?

Indeed, there other ways which can be used to explain phenomena around us and obtain knowledge about them. For example, many people use their belief in a God and the consequences of believing in a God to get confirmation of answers to many questions which are also answered by science; this is the theory that God exists due to the ‘divine arguments from the scientific law’– the patterns discovered by scientists are confirmed by what is written about God in the Bible. A belief in a God may well account for a good, truthful explanation to such questions, since Religious Knowledge Systems add to one’s personal knowledge, and shape our decisions. One way through which people can come to believe the existence of a God is due to the illusory truth effect. This is the penchant we, as humans, have to believe things that have been told to us previously, and in most cases many times, regardless of how secure we really are about their truth; we could not be sure about a God’s existence, but living in a religious family and being told that it exists creates a flaw in our reasoning, leading us to process reality in a wrong manner. What this implicates is that this effect represents a biased transition from shared knowledge to personal knowledge, which occurs in one’s mind. Now we are led to ask: does religion offer a good way of obtaining the truth? One view on this topic is that the explanations offered by religion, although possibly unprovable by scientific methods, offer truthful, effective ways of understanding the world. And in this sense, there would be no need to measure the world around us: one’s faith in a God would account for uncertainties in measurements. For example, adherents believe that the Bible contains the word of God, consequently for them it offers a powerful way to judge the world and assess whether an explanation is true or not. This leads to a consideration of the value of faith in filtering knowledge: is faith a self-imposed, irrational limit to truth and knowledge?

It may well be possible that faith could be used as an advantage in order to generate more knowledge about the world around us. Johannes Kepler was an astronomer who defended the work of Nicolaus Copernicus. He did this using a religious argument rather than a scientific publication. Kepler aimed to coalesce his faith into his scientific advances; he argued that the universe was simply an expression of God: the Sun would be the father, the stellar sphere was the Son and the space between was the Holy Spirit. Kepler’s theological certainties induced him to believe that his scientific discoveries were merely reflections of God’s fine calculations about the Universe. It can be deduced from this that for Kepler, such a good explanation of the universe must inherently be true, or otherwise it would not have satisfied his quest for both religious and scientific reconciliation. Indeed, it can be argued that for Kepler, faith and reason provided the truth that he was seeking to obtain good explanations about the universe, and without perceiving this element of truth he would not have been so confident in having gained such vast knowledge of the universe, since he believed that only God could have created such a perfect universe.

Conversely, his argument is considered to be false by people who identify as being atheist, who claim that the perfect structures of the universe have not been created by a God but are rather the product of nature; and argue that explanations involving religion should have no impact on scientific explanations. On the other hand, therefore, it becomes apparent that a good explanation must not necessarily be true, but rather may have to be testable in order to let us perceive that we have more knowledge. This has been especially true in recent years, during which more and more people have lost their religious faith, and a theory attributing the motion of planets to God would not have much consensus, , while on the other hand explanations such as Kepler’s Second Law are seen with much more favour; therefore, we are led to ask: how does scientific knowledge change in time? The changes in the scientific methods used to explain phenomena around us could determine whether we require good explanations to be true, accepting or discarding certain theories, but there still is a subjective element in what we consider to be true, which could be supported by religious knowledge.

In conclusion, a number of perspectives have emerged from both sides of the argument. On one hand, it can be said that it could not be necessary for an explanation to be true in order to be good, as for example in the Natural Sciences there are a number of fundamental uncertainties which, for simplicity, are regarded as having minor importance on the outcome of the experiment or theory and which still allow for effective ways of gaining knowledge. A good explanation in the form of a scientific theory can never be true, but we can nevertheless produce strong arguments. On the other hand, explanations may have to be true, because, for example, an atheist may completely reject the idea of a God as an explanation for many phenomena, because it does not conform to their view of life.

It is seen that that the opening question is up to further debate because it depends on the context, especially from person to person, whether good explanations have to be true or not. I feel that if we strongly believe in an explanation, what others think should not change the fact that our perception of what a good explanation is comes from inside us, and we can accept something which maybe is not true if we are satisfied by it. The implications of this essay are significant, because, in concrete terms, a true explanation may be necessary in rigorous environments such as those pertaining to the Natural Sciences, but perhaps false explanations may be acceptable for someone because they can correspond to a feeling inside us.

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