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Truth is inconcussible—forever
exempt from all transient vicissitudes,
albeit never dead and formal, always vibrant
and adaptable—radiantly alive. But when
truth becomes linked with fact, then both
time and space condition its meanings and
correlate its values. Such realities of
truth wedded to fact become concepts and are
accordingly relegated to the domain of
relative cosmic realities
(118:3.3).
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Of truths we say correctly “Once true, ever
after true”. All truth is in that
sense inconcussible and exempt from
vicissitude. It achieves what Mr.
Whitehead calls “objective immortality”,
even if the truth be about temporal events
that have occurred, and about their
temporality. If it be true that X occurred,
that truth cannot afterwards be altered....
Truths, therefore, that describe present and
past (including truths that describe their
temporal relationships) are, because true,
timelessly so....
Similar remarks should be made about the
eternity of concepts; for concepts
themselves are timeless or unchangeable.
This applies even to the concept of time or
to the concept of change. If by reason of
much philosophy we come to alter our
conception of time or of change, we may or
may not be wise, but the meaning of the
statement is that we come to use different
concepts to describe these realities or what
we suppose to be such. The concepts do not
change. We choose different concepts to
express what we mean; and that facts may
justify us.
—John Laird (1940) |
