Throughout history, the pursuit of truth has resulted in bloody battles between various groups of people. This is because the notion of absolute truth has a devastating effect on worldviews and ideologies.
To understand how this is possible, one must first consider the origin of the idea of truth itself. Historically, philosophers have taken the question of truth very seriously, and their responses have often been highly debated.
The Problem of Classifying the Insanities of Old Age
In the medical world, there is a debate about whether old age should be classified as a disease. Many researchers support this idea, arguing that aging isn’t a single event but rather a series of events requiring a different level of care.
The World Healths Organizations International Classification of Diseases (ICD) revises its nomenclature every 10 years. The latest version replaces the word senescence with “old age,” which is now coded as a disease in its own right.
But a new study has found that this change must be clarified and misleading. The new designation could lead to inadequate medical attention for older patients with multiple illnesses and problems.
This is especially true of the older people who have become accustomed to the stigmatized treatment of old age in the media. A survey conducted by AARP found that only 15 percent of TV and movie images featured people over 50 and that most older people feel their age could be represented better in the mainstream media.
The Convergence of Science and Medicine
The emergence of scientific medicine can be seen in the 19th century when discoveries by Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and other great scientists transformed how we think about our bodies. They changed the course of biological thinking and laid the foundation for modern pharmacology (which developed from herbal medicine), cell theory, and pathology.
It’s also possible to see the beginnings of convergence science in this period, which is defined as the integration of knowledge, tools, and way of thinkings from life and health sciences, physical, mathematical, and computational sciences, engineering disciplines, and beyond into a comprehensive synthetic framework that can be used to tackle scientific and societal challenges.
Convergence science has several benefits for the clinical-academic and private-industry fields, but it may pose some issues for practitioners. For example, greater involvement of clinicians in non-clinical convergence activities can reduce time spent on front-line service provision roles, while increasing exposure to and engagement with private industry fields could present ethical issues.
The Problem of Memory
Generally speaking, memory is the process of storing information that has come to us from our sensory input. This can be done in variety of ways.
One way is by changing the form of the information (as in acoustic coding). Another is by making it more complex, such as in semantic processing.
It is this last process that tends to lead to problems with memory. This is called suggestibility and can cause people to be misled or to make false memories about events that have not happened yet.
Despites this there is no reason to believe that memory is any more or less reliable than other sources of knowledge. For this reason, the social history of truth has reflected several theories about remembering and justification.
The Problem of Truth
Truth is the basis for many human activities, including philosophy, art, religion and science. However, there needs to be more debate over the definition of this concept.
Historically, it has been believed that truth is socially constructed, based on people’s perceptions, way of thinking, emotionality and form of verbal and non-verbal communication (language). This assumption was made by early proponents such as Hegel, Garns, and Marx.
This has led to several theories about truth. These include constructive, coherent, consensus, and correspondence theories.