Do not be afraid to say "truth"

“Those who are aware of the value of truth and decaying power
amateurism and quackery and tries to this power
resist, will continue to be in the difficult
the situation floating against the current ... "

Very often we recall important statements of wonderful people after their death. Of course, it would be better to remember more often during life, but so we are arranged.

When Andrei Zaliznyak died, his quote about the Truth flew around social networks. I repeat once again: “Truth exists, and the purpose of science is its search” (a more complete quote is given on the incense. See page 2 ). This was said in 2007 at the presentation of the literary prize, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (we publish the scientist’s speech in this issue of the newspaper). There are other important theses in Zaliznyak’s performance, but it was this one that caused the greatest enthusiasm. At the end of December, I saw at least ten independent citation in my Facebook tape on Facebook.

It would seem that this is the statement of the academician - the alphabetical truth (sorry for the tautology). However, sometimes alphabetical truths are very useful to repeat: they are forgotten, more precisely, drowning in verbal garbage. A person living in a stream of demagogy and obscurantism, pouring from all the irons, often ceases to believe in anything, including himself: "Is I crazy-or the surrounding world?" And when he hears a clear statement of a respected academician, such as “Yes, this alphabetical truth is true, and I’m standing on that,” solid ground appears underfoot.

It seems to me that now the statement of Andrei Zaliznyak about truth and trust to professionals is more relevant than in 2007. Since then, the inspection is strong. Some people generally lost any guidelines, but others only missed the real concepts and basic concepts, “emerging from fashion,” noticeable by verbal purge. That is why the theses of Andrei Zaliznyak from the performance of a ten -year ago gave such a resonance now. The very concept of “truth” is that scientific, that everyday is inconvenient for a lot. Take state propaganda, take the rabid patriots. Take Medinsky’s incident. Come on with these, sometimes my like -minded people, wonderful people, begin to be ashamed of real words and offer to use instead of “truth”, for example, constructions such as “effective explanatory model”, which I would define as some verbal grimaces in attempts to follow philosophical poet.

Yes, there are philosophical trends, where the concept of “scientific truth” is not in honor. And the science itself, and its representatives, was a matter, were accused of assigning a monopoly on the truth. This resembles a struggle for a place under the sun.

What is the truth?

Of course, in this context, no one speaks of a certain absolute, and even with a religious shade. The truth that everyday, that scientific, accepts a specific expression, it can be incomplete, limited by some framework. But from this it does not cease to be the truth. Instead of knitting in heavy definitions, it is better to give a few examples.

We will not go far, here are the closest examples of scientific truth:

• The authenticity of the “Words of Igor’s Regiment” is truth. This is exactly what Andrei Zaliznyak worked on - the area is catastrophically far from me, but I completely trust the chip, looking at the records of his lectures about birch bark letters. A conscientious talented professional is felt a mile away. I also trust other researchers confirming this thesis.
• The origin of a person from a monkey is truth. I give this example as the most textbook: after all, the subject of a hot one and a half century struggle between the scientific and religious views of the world. He is cited in his speech Andrei Zaliznyak.
• The expansion of the universe and its origin from an over -expert state about 14 billion years ago is truth. This is already my diocese ... A noticeable opposition to this truth exists in the broad masses, since all this is very difficult to imagine, since we are talking about inhuman scale, inhuman conditions, and inhuman geometry. But it is here that the power of science appears most clearly, which works great in these "inhuman" areas, perfectly making all ends meet.

But the theory of cosmological inflation, which describes the biography of the Universe before the Big Bang, being the most plausible and fruitful hypothesis, while it is slightly prevented to the status of truth. Moreover, it is known that the theory of inflation must be measured, but this is a matter of several years. As for the very first moments of the existence of the Universe (near -planning scale) - there the truth is still buried very deeply. This is a challenge to the current and future professional researchers. The situation is approximately the same in many other areas of science: something has been established forever, something is about to, and somewhere everything is so unclear that the researchers drop.

In each of these examples there are unclear details (a specific author of the “Word”, the last common ancestor of a person and chimpanzees, the composition of dark matter). So what? From this, the listed statements did not become neither doubtful nor faster. They are supported by many facts and are well described by a clear scientific language. So what word will we characterize them? “Truth” or, for example, “explanatory model”? A matter of taste? Perhaps, but I still urge you to use real words more often. This refreshes the tongue and, most importantly, brains.

Boris Stern,
Astrophysicist, editor-in-chief of the TRV-hunger
Used photos A. Kasyan and Gramoty.ru