Relative and absolute truths. Absolute and relative truth is

Absolute and relative truth

Exists different forms truth. They are subdivided according to the nature of the reflected (cognizable) object, according to the types of objective reality, according to the degree of completeness of mastering the object, etc. Let us first turn to the nature of the reflected object. The whole reality surrounding a person, in the first approximation, turns out to be consisting of matter and spirit, forming a single system. Both the first and second spheres of reality become the object of human reflection and information about them is embodied in truths.

The flow of information coming from the material systems of micro-, macro- and mega-worlds forms what can be designated as objective truth (it is then differentiated into subject-physical, subject-biological and other types of truth). The concept of "spirit", correlated from the perspective of the main issue of the worldview with the concept of "nature" or "world", in turn breaks up into existential reality and cognitive reality (in the sense: rationalistic-cognitive).

Existential reality includes the spiritual and vital values of people, such as the ideals of goodness, justice, beauty, feelings of love, friendship, etc., as well as the spiritual world of individuals. The question of whether my idea of goodness (how it developed in such and such a community), my understanding of the spiritual world of such and such a person is true or not is quite natural. If on this path we achieve a true idea, then we can assume that we are dealing with existential truth. The object of development by an individual can also be certain concepts, including religious and natural sciences. One can raise the question of the conformity of an individual's beliefs to one or another set of religious dogmas, or, for example, of the correctness of our understanding of the theory of relativity or the modern synthetic theory of evolution; both there and here the concept of "truth" is used, which leads to the recognition of the existence of conceptual truth. The situation is similar with the ideas of one or another subject about methods, means of cognition, for example, with ideas about a systematic approach, about a modeling method, etc.

Before us is another form of truth - operational. In addition to the selected ones, there may be forms of truth due to the specifics of the types of human cognitive activity. On this basis, there are forms of truth: scientific, everyday (everyday), moral, etc. Let us give the following example, illustrating the difference between ordinary truth and scientific truth. The sentence "Snow is white" can qualify as true. This truth belongs to the realm of ordinary knowledge. Turning to scientific knowledge, we first of all clarify this proposal. The scientific correlate of the truth of ordinary knowledge "Snow is white" will be the sentence "The whiteness of snow is the effect of incoherent light reflected by snow on visual receptors." This proposal is no longer a simple statement of observations, but a consequence of scientific theories - the physical theory of light and the biophysical theory of visual perception. Ordinary truth contains a statement of phenomena and correlations between them. The criteria of scientificity are applicable to scientific truth. All signs (or criteria) of scientific truth are interconnected. Only in a system, in their unity, are they able to reveal scientific truth, to delimit it from the truth of everyday knowledge or from the "truths" of religious or authoritarian knowledge. Practically everyday knowledge is substantiated from everyday experience, from some inductively established recipe rules that do not necessarily have evidentiary force, do not have strict coercion.

The discursiveness of scientific knowledge is based on a forced sequence of concepts and judgments, given by the logical structure of knowledge (causal structure), forms a feeling of subjective conviction in the possession of truth. Therefore, acts of scientific knowledge are accompanied by the confidence of the subject in the reliability of its content. That is why knowledge is understood as a form of subjective right to truth. Under the conditions of science, this right turns into the obligation of the subject to recognize logically substantiated, discursively demonstrative, organized, "systematically connected" truth. Within science, there are modifications of scientific truth (according to the areas of scientific knowledge: mathematics, physics, biology, etc.). Truth as an epistemological category should be distinguished from logical truth (sometimes qualified as logical correctness).

Logical truth (in formal logic) is the truth of a sentence (judgment, statement), due to its formal logical structure and the laws of logic adopted during its consideration (in contrast to the so-called factual truth, the establishment of which also requires an analysis of the content of the sentence). objective truth in criminal proceedings, in historical science, in other humanitarian and social sciences. Considering, for example, historical truth, A. I. Rakitov came to the conclusion that in historical knowledge "a completely peculiar cognitive situation arises: historical truths are a reflection of the real, past social significant activities people, i.e. historical practice, but they themselves are not included, are not verified and are not modified in the system of practical activity of the researcher (historian)" (the above provision should not be regarded as violating the idea of the criterial signs of scientific truth.

In this context, the term "verifiability" is used in the sense strictly designated by the author; but "verifiability" also includes an appeal to observation, the possibility of repeated observation, which always takes place in historical knowledge). In humanitarian knowledge, the depth of understanding, which is correlated not only with reason, but also with an emotional, value attitude person to the world. This bipolarity of truth is most clearly expressed in art, in the concept of "artistic truth." As V. I. Svintsov notes, it is more correct to consider artistic truth as one of the forms of truth that is constantly used (along with other forms) in cognition and intellectual communication. Series analysis works of art shows that there is a "truth basis" of artistic truth in these works. "It is quite possible that it is, as it were, moved from the surface to the deeper layers. Although it is not always easy to establish a connection between "depth" and "surface", it is clear that it must exist ...

In reality, the truth (falsehood) in works containing such constructions can be "hidden" in the plot-plot layer, the layer of characters, and finally in the layer of coded ideas.

The artist is able to discover and demonstrate the truth in an artistic form. An important place in the theory of knowledge is occupied by the forms of truth: relative and absolute. The question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth could fully become a worldview issue only at a certain stage in the development of human culture, when it was discovered that people are dealing with cognitively inexhaustible, complexly organized objects, when the inconsistency of the claims of any theories for the final (absolute) comprehension of these objects was revealed.

Absolute truth is currently understood as such kind of knowledge that is identical to its subject and therefore cannot be refuted with the further development of knowledge.

There is such a truth:

a) the result of the knowledge of certain aspects of the objects under study (statement of facts);
b) final knowledge of certain aspects of reality;
c) the content of relative truth, which is preserved in the process of further cognition;
d) complete, actually never completely unattainable knowledge about the world and (we will add) about complexly organized systems.

Apparently up to late XIX- beginning of XX century. in natural science, and in philosophy, the idea of truth as absolute in the meanings marked by points a, b and c dominated. When something is stated that exists or actually existed (for example, in 1688 red blood cells-erythrocytes were discovered, and in 1690 the polarization of light was observed), not only the years of discoveries of these structures or phenomena are "absolute", but also assertions that these phenomena actually occur. This statement fits general definition concept of "absolute truth". And here we do not find "relative" truth that differs from "absolute" (except when changing the reference system and reflection on the theories themselves that explain these phenomena; but this requires a certain change in the scientific theories themselves and the transition of some theories to others). When a strict philosophical definition is given to the concepts of "movement", "jump", etc., such knowledge can also be considered absolute truth in the sense that coincides with relative truth (and in this respect, the use of the concept "relative truth" is not necessary, as it becomes superfluous and the problem of correlation between absolute and relative truths). Such absolute truth is not opposed by any relative truth, unless we turn to the formation of the corresponding ideas in the history of natural science and in the history of philosophy. There will be no problem of correlation between absolute and relative truths even when dealing with sensations or in general non-verbal forms of human reflection of reality. But when this problem is removed in our time for the same reasons that it did not exist in the 17th or 18th centuries, then this is already an anachronism. As applied to sufficiently developed scientific theoretical knowledge, absolute truth is complete, exhaustive knowledge about an object (a complexly organized material system or the world as a whole); relative truth is incomplete knowledge about the same subject.

An example of this kind of relative truths is the theory of classical mechanics and the theory of relativity. Classical mechanics as an isomorphic reflection of a certain sphere of reality, notes D.P. Gorsky, was considered a true theory without any restrictions, i.e. true in some absolute sense, since it was used to describe and predict real processes of mechanical motion. With the advent of the theory of relativity, it was found that it could no longer be considered true without limitations. The isomorphism of the theory as an image of mechanical motion ceased to be complete over time; in the subject area, the relationships between the corresponding characteristics of mechanical movement were revealed (with high speeds), which were not satisfied in classical mechanics. Classical (with restrictions introduced into it) and relativistic mechanics, already considered as corresponding isomorphic mappings, are interconnected as less complete truth and more complete truth. Absolute isomorphism between a mental representation and a certain sphere of reality, as it exists independently of us, emphasizes D. P. Gorsky, is unattainable at any level of knowledge.

Such an idea of absolute, and even of relative truth, connected with entering the process of development of scientific knowledge, the development of scientific theories, leads us to the true dialectic of absolute and relative truth. Absolute truth (in aspect d) is made up of relative truths. If we recognize absolute truth in the diagram as an infinite area to the right of the "zx" vertical and above the "zу" horizontal, then steps 1, 2, 3 ... will be relative truths. At the same time, these same relative truths turn out to be parts of absolute truth, and therefore, simultaneously (and in the same respect) absolute truths. It is no longer absolute truth (d), but absolute truth (c). Relative truth is absolute in its third aspect, and not just leading to absolute truth as an exhaustive knowledge about an object, but as an integral part of it, invariant in its content as part of an ideally complete absolute truth. Each relative truth is at the same time absolute (in the sense that it contains a part of the absolute - r). The unity of absolute truth (in the third and fourth aspects) and relative truth is determined by their content; they are united because both absolute and relative truths are objective truths.

When we consider the movement of the atomistic concept from antiquity to the 17th-18th centuries, and then to the beginning of the 20th century, in this process, behind all the deviations, there is a core line associated with the growth, multiplication of objective truth in the sense of an increase in the volume of information of a true nature. (True, one has to note that the above diagram, which quite clearly shows the formation of absolute truth from relative ones, needs some corrections: relative truth 2 does not exclude relative truth, as in the diagram, but absorbs it into itself, transforming it in a certain way) . So what was true in the atomistic conception of Democritus is also included in the truth content of the modern atomistic conception.

Does relative truth contain any moments of error? There is a point of view in the philosophical literature according to which relative truth consists of objective truth plus error. We have already seen above, when we began to consider the question of objective truth and gave an example with the atomistic concept of Democritus, that the problem of evaluating a particular theory in terms of "truth - error" is not so simple. It must be admitted that any truth, even if it is relative, is always objective in its content; and being objective, relative truth is non-historical (in the sense we have touched upon) and non-class. If delusion is included in the composition of relative truth, then this will be the fly in the ointment that will spoil the whole barrel of honey. As a result, truth ceases to be truth. Relative truth excludes any moments of error or falsehood. Truth at all times remains truth, adequately reflecting real phenomena; relative truth is objective truth, excluding error and falsehood.

The historical development of scientific theories aimed at reproducing the essence of one and the same object is subject to the correspondence principle (this principle was formulated by the physicist N. Bohr in 1913). According to the correspondence principle, the replacement of one natural science theory with another reveals not only a difference, but also a connection, a continuity between them, which can be expressed with mathematical precision.

The new theory, coming to replace the old one, not only denies the latter, but retains it in a certain form. Thanks to this, a reverse transition from the subsequent theory to the previous one is possible, their coincidence in a certain limiting region, where the differences between them turn out to be insignificant. For example, the laws of quantum mechanics transform into the laws of classical mechanics under conditions when the magnitude of the quantum of action can be neglected. (In the literature, the normative and descriptive nature of this principle is expressed in the requirement that each subsequent theory does not logically contradict the previously accepted and justified in practice; the new theory should include the former one as a limiting case, i.e. the laws and formulas of the former theory in certain extreme conditions should automatically follow from the formula of the new theory). So, the truth is objective in content, but in form it is relative (relative-absolute). The objectivity of truth is the basis of the continuity of truths. Truth is a process. The property of objective truth to be a process manifests itself in two ways: firstly, as a process of change in the direction of an increasingly complete reflection of the object and, secondly, as a process of overcoming delusion in the structure of concepts and theories. The movement from a less complete truth to a more complete one (ie the process of its development), like any movement, development, has moments of stability and moments of variability. In unity controlled by objectivity, they ensure the growth of the truth content of knowledge. When this unity is violated, the growth of truth slows down or stops altogether. With the hypertrophy of the moment of stability (absoluteness), dogmatism, fetishism, and a cult attitude towards authority are formed. Such a situation existed, for example, in our philosophy in the period from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. The absolutization of the relativity of knowledge in the sense of replacing some concepts by others can give rise to wasted skepticism and, in the end, agnosticism. Relativism can be a worldview setting. Relativism causes that mood of confusion and pessimism in the field of cognition, which we saw above in H.A. Lorentz and which, of course, had an inhibitory effect on the development of his scientific research. Gnoseological relativism is outwardly opposed to dogmatism. However, they are united in the gap between the stable and changeable, as well as the absolutely relative in truth; they complement each other. Dialectics opposes to dogmatism and relativism such an interpretation of truth, in which absoluteness and relativity, stability and variability are linked together. The development of scientific knowledge is its enrichment, concretization. Science is characterized by a systematic increase in the truth potential.

Consideration of the question of the forms of truth leads closely to the question of the various conceptions of truth, their relationship with each other, and also attempts to find out whether certain forms of truth are hidden behind them? If such are found, then, apparently, the former straightforwardly critical approach to them (as to "unscientific") should be discarded. These concepts must be recognized as specific strategies for the investigation of truth; try to synthesize them.

In recent years, this idea has been clearly formulated by L. A. Mikeshina. Having in mind different concepts, she notes that these concepts should be considered in interaction, since they are complementary in nature, in fact, not denying each other, but expressing the epistemological, semantic, epistemological and sociocultural aspects of true knowledge. And although, in her opinion, each of them is worthy of constructive criticism, this does not mean ignoring the positive results of these theories. L. A. Mikeshina believes that knowledge should correlate with other knowledge, since it is systemic and interconnected, and in the system of propositions sentences of object and metalanguage (according to Tarsky) can be correlated.

The pragmatic approach, in turn, if it is not simplified and vulgarized, fixes the role of social significance, recognized by society, the communicativeness of truth. These approaches, as long as they do not claim to be unique and universal, represent in the aggregate, emphasizes L. A. Mikeshina, a fairly rich toolkit for epistemological and logical-methodological analysis of the truth of knowledge as a system of propositions. Accordingly, each of the approaches offers its own criteria of truth, which, for all their unequal value, should, apparently, be considered in unity and interaction, that is, in a combination of empirical, subject-practical and non-empirical (logical, methodological, sociocultural, and other criteria )

Absolute and Relative Truth- philosophical concepts that reflect the historical process of cognition of objective reality. In contrast to metaphysics, which proceeds from the premise of the immutability of human knowledge and accepts every truth as a once and for all given, ready-made result of cognition, dialectical materialism considers cognition as a historical protest of movement from ignorance to the banner, from knowledge of individual phenomena, individual aspects of reality to a deeper and complete ZESVIA, to the discovery of ever new new laws of development.
The process of cognition of the world and its laws is just as endless as the development of nature and society is endless. Our knowledge at each given stage in the development of science is conditioned by the historically achieved level of knowledge, the level of development of technology, industry, etc. As knowledge and practice continue to develop, human ideas about nature deepen, refine, and improve.

Because of this, the truths known by science at a particular historical stage cannot be considered final, complete. They are necessarily relative truths, i.e., truths that need "further development, further verification and refinement. Thus, the atom was considered indivisible until the beginning of the 20th century, when it was proved that it, in turn, consists of electrons and runs The electronic theory of the structure of matter represents the deepening and expansion of our knowledge about matter. Modern views about the atom are significantly different in their depth from those that arose at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
Our knowledge about (see) has especially deepened. But even what science now knows about the structure of matter is not the last and final truth: “... dialectical materialism insists on the temporary, relative, approximate nature of all these milestones in the knowledge of nature by the progressive science of man. The electron is just as inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite ... ".

Truths are also relative in the sense that they are filled with specific historical content, and therefore a change in historical conditions inevitably leads to changes in truth. What is true under certain historical conditions ceases to be true under other conditions. Thus, for example, the thesis of Marx and Engels about the impossibility of the victory of socialism in one country was true in the period of pre-monopoly capitalism. Under the conditions of imperialism, this proposition ceased to be correct. Lenin created a new theory of socialist revolution, a theory about the possibility of building socialism in one or several countries and the impossibility of its simultaneous victory in all countries.

Emphasizing the relative nature scientific truths, dialectical materialism at the same time considers that each relative truth means a step in the knowledge of absolute truth, that each step of scientific knowledge contains elements of absolute, i.e., complete, truth, which cannot be refuted in the future. There is no insurmountable line between relative and absolute truth. The totality of relative truths in their development gives the absolute truth. Dialectical materialism recognizes the relativity of all our knowledge, not in the sense of denying truth, but only in the sense that we cannot at any given moment know it to the end, exhaust it all. This position of dialectical materialism on the nature of relative truths is of fundamental importance. The development of sciences leads to the fact that more and more new concepts and ideas about the external world constantly arise, which replace some old, obsolete concepts and ideas.

Idealists use this inevitable and natural moment in the process of cognition to prove the impossibility of the existence of objective truth, to push through the idealistic fabrication that the external material world does not exist, that the world is only a complex of sensations. Since truths are relative, say the idealists, it means that they are nothing but subjective ideas and arbitrary constructions of man; this means that behind the sensations of a person there is nothing, no objective world, or we cannot know anything about it. This charlatan device of the idealists is widely used in modern bourgeois philosophy with the aim of replacing science with religion, fideism. Dialectical materialism exposes the tricks of the idealists. The fact that this truth cannot be considered final, complete, does not indicate that it does not reflect the objective world, is not objective truth, but that this process of reflection is complex, depends on the historically existing level of development of science, that the absolute truth cannot be known all at once.

Great merit in elaborating this question belongs to Lenin, who exposed the attempts of the Machists to reduce the recognition of relative truth to the denial of the external world and objective truth, to the denial of absolute truth. “The contours of the picture (i.e., the picture of nature described by science. - Ed.) Are historically conventional, but what is certain is that this picture depicts an objectively existing model. It is historically conditional when and under what conditions we advanced in our knowledge of the essence of things to the discovery of alizarin in coal tar or to the discovery of electrons in the atom, but it is certain that each such discovery is a step forward of "unconditionally objective knowledge." In a word, any ideology is historically conditional, but what is certain is that any scientific ideology (unlike, for example, religious) corresponds to objective truth, absolute nature.

Therefore, the recognition of absolute truth is the recognition of the existence of an external objective world, the recognition that our knowledge reflects objective truth. Marxism teaches that to recognize objective truth, that is, truth independent of man and mankind, means, in one way or another, to recognize absolute truth. The only thing is that this absolute truth is known in parts, in the course of the progressive development of human knowledge. “Human thinking, by its very nature, is able to give and gives us absolute truth, which is made up of the sum of relative truths. Each stage in the development of science adds new grains to this sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific position are relative, being sometimes expanded, and narrowed by further growth of knowledge.

The concept of truth is complex and contradictory. Different philosophers, different religions have their own. The first definition of truth was given by Aristotle, and it has become generally accepted: Truth is the unity of thought and being. I will decipher: if you think about something, and your thoughts correspond to reality, then this is the truth.

In everyday life, truth is synonymous with truth. “Truth is in wine,” said Pliny the Elder, meaning that under the influence of a certain amount of wine, a person begins to tell the truth. In fact, these concepts are somewhat different. truth and truth- both reflect reality, but truth is more a logical concept, and truth is sensual. Now comes the moment of pride in our native Russian language. In most European countries, these two concepts are not distinguished, they have one word ("truth", "vérité", "wahrheit"). Let's open the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language by V. Dahl: “Truth is ... everything that is true, authentic, accurate, fair, that is; ... truth: truthfulness, justice, justice, rightness. So, we can conclude that the truth is a morally valuable truth ("We will win, the truth is with us").

Theories of truth.

As already mentioned, there are many theories, depending on philosophical schools and religions. Consider the main theories of truth:

empirical: truth is all knowledge based on the accumulated experience of mankind. Author - Francis Bacon.
sensationalistic(Hume): Truth can only be known by sensation, sensation, perception, contemplation.
Rationalist(Descartes): all truth is already contained in the human mind, from where it must be extracted.
Agnostic(Kant): truth is unknowable in itself ("thing in itself").
Skeptical(Montaigne): nothing is true, a person is not capable of obtaining any reliable knowledge about the world.

Truth criteria.

Truth Criteria- these are the parameters that help to distinguish truth from falsehood or error.

Compliance with logical laws.
Compliance with previously discovered and proven laws and theorems of science.
Simplicity, general availability of the wording.
Compliance with fundamental laws and axioms.
Paradoxical.
Practice.

V modern world practice(as a set of experience accumulated by generations, the results of various experiments and the results of material production) is the first most important criterion of truth.

Kinds of truth.

Kinds of truth- a classification invented by some authors of school textbooks on philosophy, based on their desire to classify everything, sort it out and make it publicly available. This is my personal, subjective opinion, which appeared after studying many sources. Truth is one. Breaking it into types is stupid, and contradicts the theory of any philosophical school or religious teaching. However, truth has different aspects of(what some see as "kinds"). Here we will consider them.

aspects of truth.

We open almost any cheat sheet site created to help pass the exam in philosophy, social science in the "Truth" section, and what will we see? Three main aspects of truth will stand out: objective (one that does not depend on a person), absolute (proven by science, or an axiom) and relative (truth from only one side). The definitions are correct, but consideration of these aspects is extremely superficial. If not to say - amateurish.

I would single out (based on the ideas of Kant and Descartes, philosophy and religion, etc.) four aspects. These aspects should be divided into two categories, not dumped all in one heap. So:

Criteria of subjectivity-objectivity.

objective truth is objective in its essence and does not depend on a person: the Moon revolves around the Earth, and we cannot influence this fact, but we can make it an object of study.

subjective truth depends on the subject, that is, we explore the Moon and are the subject, but if we did not exist, then there would be neither subjective nor objective truth. This truth is directly dependent on the objective.

The subject and object of truth are interconnected. It turns out that subjectivity and objectivity are facets of the same truth.

Criteria of absoluteness-relativity.

absolute truth- the truth, proven by science and beyond doubt. For example, a molecule is made up of atoms.

Relative truth- what is true at a certain period of history or from a certain point of view. Until the end of the 19th century, the atom was considered the smallest indivisible part of matter, and this was true until scientists discovered protons, neutrons and electrons. And in that moment, the truth changed. And then scientists discovered that protons and neutrons are made up of quarks. Further, I think, you can not continue. It turns out that the relative truth was absolute for a certain period of time. As the creators convinced us " X-Files", The truth is somewhere near. And yet where?

Let me give you one more example. Seeing a photograph of the Cheops pyramid from a satellite at a certain angle, it can be argued that it is a square. And a photo taken at a certain angle from the surface of the Earth will convince you that this is a triangle. In fact, it is a pyramid. But from the point of view of two-dimensional geometry (planimetry), the first two statements are true.

Thus, it turns out that absolute and relative truth are as interconnected as subjective-objective. Finally, we can conclude. Truth has no types, it is one, but it has aspects, that is, what is true from different angles of consideration.

Truth - complex concept, which remains one and indivisible. Both the study and understanding of this term at this stage by a person has not yet been completed.

The truth of a thought or idea is based on how much they correspond to objective reality, how much they correspond to practice.
“This rope will not withstand 16 kg. - No, it will withstand ...” no matter how much we argue, we will find out whose opinion is most true only after we hang a weight on the rope and try to lift it.
Philosophy singles out concrete and abstract, relative and absolute truth. Relative truth is incomplete, often even inaccurate knowledge about an object or phenomenon. Usually it corresponds to a certain level of development of society, to the instrumental and research base that it has. Relative truth is also a moment of our limited knowledge of the world, the approximation and imperfection of our knowledge, this is knowledge that depends on hysterical conditions, the time of the place of its receipt.
Any truth, any knowledge that we use in practice is relative. Any, the simplest object has an infinite variety of properties, an infinite number of relationships.
Let's take our example. The rope can withstand the weight, which is stamped "16 kilograms". This is a relative truth, reflecting one, but not the main and by no means the only property of the rope. What material is it made from? What chemical composition this material? Who, when and where produced this material? How else can this material be used? One can formulate hundreds of questions about this simple subject, but even after answering them, we will not know EVERYTHING about it.
Relative truth is true as long as it meets the practical needs of man. For a long time, the postulate of a flat Earth and the Sun revolving around it was true for a person, but only as long as this idea met the needs for navigation of ships that, when sailing, did not leave the sight of the coast.
In addition, relative truth must meet the needs of the individual. The primitive potter did not need to know the clay firing temperature in degrees - he successfully determined it by eye, the surgeon did not need to know the number of relatives of the patient at all, and the teacher did not need to know the size of the student's shoes.
Absolute truth is an adequate reflection by the subject that cognizes the cognized object, its presentation by what it really is, regardless of the level of knowledge of a person and his opinion about this object. Here a contradiction immediately arises - any human knowledge cannot be independent of a person, precisely because it is human. Absolute truth is also an understanding of the infinity of the world, the limits to which human knowledge aspires. The concept of "infinity" is easily operated by mathematicians and physicists, but it is not given to the human mind to imagine, to see infinity. Absolute truth is also exhaustive, reliable, verified knowledge that cannot be refuted. For a long time, the concept of the indivisibility of the atom was at the heart of the world outlook. The word itself is translated as "indivisible". Today we cannot be sure that tomorrow any truth that seems indisputable today will not be rejected.
The main difference between relative and absolute truth is in the completeness and adequacy of the reflection of reality. Truth is always relative and concrete. “A person has a heart on the left side of the chest” - this is a relative truth - a person has many more properties and organs, but not a specific one, that is, it cannot be a universal truth - there are people whose heart is located on the right. 2+2 is true in arithmetic, but two people + two people can be a team, a gang, or equal to a number greater than 4 if it's two married couples. 2 weight units + 2 weight units of uranium may not mean 4 weight units, but a nuclear reaction. Mathematics and physics, and indeed any exact sciences, use abstract truths. “The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs,” and it doesn’t matter where the triangle is drawn - on the ground or on the human body, what color, size, etc.
Even seemingly absolute moral truths often turn out to be relative. How universally recognized is the truth about the need to respect parents, from biblical commandments to all world literature, but when Miklouho-Maclay tried to convince the wild islanders of Oceania who ate their parents that this was unacceptable, they gave him an argument that was indisputable from their point of view; "Better we eat them and sustain our own lives and the lives of our children, than worms eat them." I am not talking about such a moral imperative as respect for the life of another person, which is completely forgotten during the war, moreover, it degenerates into its opposite.
Human knowledge is an endless process of movement from relative to absolute truth. At each stage, the truth, being relative, nevertheless remains true - it meets the needs of a person, the level of development of his tools and production as a whole, does not contradict the reality that he observes. That's when this contradiction of objective reality comes - the search for a new truth, more close to the absolute, begins. In every relative truth there is a bit of absolute truth - the idea that the Earth is flat allowed us to draw maps and make long journeys. With the development of knowledge, the proportion of absolute truth in relative truth increases, but will never reach 100%. Many believe that the absolute truth is Revelation, it is possessed only by the Omniscient and Almighty God.
Attempts to elevate relative truth to the rank of absolute is always a ban on freedom of thought and even on specific Scientific research, just as cybernetics and genetics were banned in the USSR, just as the church at one time condemned any scientific search and refuted any discovery, because the Bible already contains absolute truth. When craters were discovered on the moon, one of the ideologues of the church simply stated on this occasion: "This is not written in the Bible, therefore, this cannot be."
In general, the construction of relative truth into absolute is typical for dictatorial authoritarian regimes, which have always hampered the development of science, as well as for any religion. A person should not seek the truth - everything is said in the Holy Scriptures. There is an exhaustive explanation for any object or phenomenon - “This is so, because the Lord created (willed) so. At one time, Clive Lewis well formulated this: “If you want to know everything, turn to God, if you are interested in learning, turn to science.”
Understanding the relativity of any truth does not disappoint in knowledge, but stimulates researchers to search.

The assertion that all truth is relative, because it is about "my truth", etc., is a fallacy. In reality, no truth can be relative, and talking about "my" truth is just gibberish. After all, any judgment is true when what is expressed in it corresponds to reality. For example, the statement "now there is thunder in Krakow" is true if there is actually thunder in Krakow. Its truth or falsity is completely independent of what we know and think about the thunder in Krakow. The reason for this delusion is the confusion of two completely different things: truth and our knowledge of truth. For knowledge about the truth of judgments is always human knowledge, it depends on the subjects and in this sense is always relative. The very truth of the judgment has nothing to do with this knowledge: the statement is true or false, completely regardless of whether someone knows about it or not. If we assume that at this moment thunder really rumbles in Krakow, it may happen that one person, Jan, knows about it, and the other, Karol, does not know and even believes that thunder does not rumble in Krakow now. In this case, Jan knows that the statement "there is thunder in Krakow" is true, but Karol does not. Thus, their knowledge depends on who has the knowledge, in other words, is relative. However, the truth or falsity of the judgment does not depend on this. Even if neither Jan nor Karol knew that thunder was thundering in Krakow now, and in fact thunder was thundering, our judgment would be absolutely true regardless of knowledge of this fact. Even the statement: "The number of stars in the Milky Way is divisible by 17", about the truth of which no one can say anything, is still either true or false.

Thus, talk of "relative" or "my" truth is a slur in the fullest sense of the word; so is the statement: "In my opinion, the Vistula flows through Poland." In order not to mutter something incomprehensible, the supporter of this superstition would have to agree that the truth is incomprehensible, that is, take the position of skepticism.

The same "relativity" can be found in pragmatic, dialectical and similar approaches to truth. All these fallacies refer to some technical difficulties, but in essence they are the result of skepticism, doubting the possibility of knowledge. As for the technical difficulties, they are imaginary. For example, it is said that the statement “now there is thunder in Krakow” is true today, but tomorrow, when there is no thunder in Krakow, it will turn out to be false. It is also said that, for example, the statement "it is raining" is true in Friborg and false in Tirnov if it is raining in the first city and the sun is shining in the second.

However, this is a misunderstanding: if we clarify the judgments and say, for example, that by the word "now" we mean July 1, 1987, 10:15 pm, then relativity will disappear.