Facts

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In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." -- Stephen Jay Gould

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Facts Are Well-Confirmed Observations

Suppose that you make some wonderful new observation, and you make your observation known. As more and more people make the same observations you do, you can be more confident that your observation is correct. If your observation is confirmed by many competent people, it can become a fact.

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Can a Fact Be Wrong?

YES!! Can "many competent observers" be wrong? Of course! For instance, according to the definition of "fact":

• At about the same time, it was a fact that the sun orbited the earth. Ask any 15th century astronomer!
• A little over a century ago, it was a fact that disease was caused by "bad blood". Therefore, the most common treatment for illness was bloodletting. If you were ill, your doctor (or barber, who treated a lot of illness at the time...) would open a vein in your arm in order to drain out the "bad blood". This was just as common as prescribing antibiotics today!
• At one time, it was a fact that major calamities were caused by the stars. In fact, the word "disaster" comes from the roots "dis", meaning bad, and "aster" meaning star. Any competent adviser would advise you to consult the stars before any major undertaking!
• In 1491, it was a fact that the earth was flat. If you asked any competent scientist, sailor, or map maker in 1491 - they would tell you that the earth was flat!
  (Note: Actually, this isn't true - many, if not most, of the competent scientists of antiquity knew that the Earth wasn't flat. The Alexandrian Greek Eratosthenes made an ingenious calculation of the circumference of the Earth, for instance. However, it is a fact that most modern physics students believe that everyone before Columbus thought that the Earth was flat, so it makes a really convincing example, nonetheless! For more information on the flat earth idea, check out this article. (Link furnished by Chase Harwell))

This point troubles people - sometimes a lot. Aren't facts things that we know to be absolutely true? Isn't that the meaning of "fact"? Well, it is the common conception of the word, but let's think about this...

How can we know that something is absolutely true? Nature has no answer book (as far as I know) that we can look in to "check our answers" - like we commonly check our assignments in school.

About all we can do, as rational beings, is make the best observations that we can, and try to ensure that competent observers confirm the observations. A fact is a well-confirmed observation. Even though this is a rather vague definition (How many observers is "many"? How do you judge who is "competent" and who isn't?) to define a fact as "something absolutely and irrefutably true" may be comforting but is useless - even dangerous - in practice.

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[Chapter 1 Objectives]