My best friend in high school was a fan of the President Harry Truman. He liked Truman because he talked bluntly and stuck with what he had to say no matter what others thought about it. Truman had a reputation for uttering hard sayings. “Give ‘em hell Harry!” was a popular saying going around at the time. Some interviewer asked President Truman what he thought about that saying. Truman replied that he thought the saying was a bit misleading. Here is his famous reply, “I only tell them the truth, and they think it’s hell.”

I count this as a profound theological statement, applicable to the Final Reality. Reality is not wrathful or angry with us. Reality only tells us the truth, and we think it is hell. Any experience of a fuller truth is always one hell of an experience, because it challenges some lesser truth to which we are still clinging, and which we are still using to organize some portion of our living. Furthermore, there is the humiliating fact that we never know the full Truth. Truth with a capital “T” is a mystery, an almighty unknown that is pushing against us, but is unknown by us – not only for now, but forever.

The more we know, the more we know we don’t know. However smart we become, we are still profoundly ignorant. This is a hard saying, for it feels like hell to anyone who is clinging to what they currently think.

Let us not give up, however, on the quest for Truth; it is also true that there are valid approaches to Truth. In terms of these approaches to Truth, it is true that some statements about Realty are more true than other statements. This is true about the scientific approach to truth. And it is also true about what I will call “the contemplative approach to truth.”

The Scientific Approach to Truth

Seriously considering a topic like “wonder” or “religious practice” is impossible for those who are too tightly locked in the box of the scientific approach to truth. The truth with which religion deals does not appear in the scientific box. The nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman is a philosopher of science that I deeply admire. Here is my summary of his colorful description of the scientific approach to truth: (1) you guess a new “law” of nature; (2) you devise a test for that guess that can show to a community of observers in an outwardly observable fashion a “Yes” or a “No” to that guess; (3) if that test says “Yes,” the law stands for now until some test says “No”; (4) if that test says “No,” you guess again and continue this process. Furthermore, if there is no test that will test your guess, you are not doing science; you are doing speculation.

If we accept this definition of the scientific approach to truth, we find that scientific truth is both approximate and progressive. It is approximate, because scientific truth is never more than a human guess that works well for now. It is progressive, because once a “No” has been observed to a previous guess, there is no going back. For example, once the Einsteinian guesses were documented by the community of physicists, there was no going back to the Newtonian guesses as the normative postulates of physics. The science of physics goes forward, guessing and testing new guesses on the foundations that the Einsteinian revolution established.

The just stated philosophy of science reveals to us the limitations of the scientific approach to truth. Science can only test guesses about objective observations. Science cannot test guesses about subjective topics like human consciousness. It can make guesses about the reports and behaviors of conscious humans and other living beings, but it cannot test guesses about consciousness itself. Why? Because the tests of science are about objective observations made by conscious persons who are being silent about their subjectivity. That subjectivity is not under discussion in the scientific approach to truth.

The Contemplative Approach to Truth

Human subjectivity is what is under discussion in the contemplative approach to truth. Some people pretend to be scientific about the contemplative approach to truth, but they are not clear about what science is. Science does not look inside the subjectivity of humans or other living beings. The word “contemplation” is pointing to an entirely different approach to truth. So what is contemplation? It is the conscious person being conscious of his or her own consciousness. There is no direct consciousness of another person’s or animal’s consciousness. We can observe another person’s behaviors and reports and guess something about their consciousness on the basis of what we have “seen” directly about our own consciousness. But we cannot “see” directly and thereby test our guesses about another person’s consciousness. The only valid test for our guesses about another person’s consciousness is to ask that other person to look inside their own consciousness and tell us what they see. This process of guessing and testing truths about consciousness is not the scientific method. It is a different method, and it has a different method of truth testing. The contemplative approach to truth can be communal only in the sense that each member of the communal effort is looking inside his or her own solitary being and comparing notes with the others who are looking inside their own solitary being. This is not science, it is something else. I am calling it “the contemplative approach to truth.”

Now I realize that there are many meanings being given to the word “contemplation,” and I also realize that many persons prefer the word “meditation,” for which there are also many meanings. So, let us attempt to see through this variety of definitions and methods to that which unites them all – namely, a single person’s consciousness concentrating upon that single person’s consciousness and attempting to put into words what they see. This is a process being done by every great poet, novelist, painter, sculptor, song writer, musician, dramatist, architect and even a psychologist who has transcended the narrow box of behavioral psychology. Contemplation, so understood, is an unavoidable human activity. But it is not science. It is another approach to truth. And this approach is important not only for clarifying the truth of art, but also for clarifying the truth of wonder, awe, and religious practice.

If you want to know more about the contemplative approach to truth, here is my more elaborate discussion of it.

http://www.realisticliving.org/PDF/Consciousness/1WhatIsTruth.pdf

And if you want to pursue the topic even further, Ken Wilber is a helpful source. He calls the scientific method “the It-approach to truth” and contemplative inquiry “the I-approach to truth.” See his Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. Such insights on these topics are core for a 21st Century epistemology. Such clarity on the quest for truth is basic for understanding the place of religion in human society and for developing a fully lucid social ethics. And these general understandings of religion and ethics are essential for a viable resurgence of Christian theologizing and practice.