Gospel According to John, the author retells a conversation between Jesus of Nazareth, who is on trial, and Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judaea. Toward the end of the interrogation, Jesus tells Pilate, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Infamously, Pilate responds, “What is truth?” Pilate’s tone is not clear. Was he asking a genuine question out of curiosity? Was he being sarcastic? Or was he asking the question in desperation, following a lifelong, exhausting search for the truth? We don’t know. What we do know is that he didn’t stick around for an answer. So, what is truth? Philosophers have struggled with this question since the dawn of time, perhaps because it’s the hardest question ever asked. The field of epistemology is the subdiscipline of philosophy that grapples it, along with the nature of knowledge itself. The question, “What do we know and how do we know it?” occupies the mind of the epistemologist. The prevailing theory of truth, at least among the public and certainly among scientists, is the correspondence theory, which states that truth corresponds with facts and reality. It’s a good theory, especially since it’s practical and governs our day-to-day interactions. If I’m holding a tart, reddish-yellow, spherical fruit, I’m holding a Cosmic Crisp apple. There is no alternative theory of truth that could convince me that it’s a limousine. Likewise, business contracts, the judicial system, and society as a whole are built around the idea that truth corresponds to reality. Science still can’t answer the biggest — and arguably, most important — questions in life. Many scientists would take this a step further and argue that the scientific method is the foremost system for determining facts. Therefore, science is the best tool to determine reality and truth. But this is where things start to get tricky. Philosophers vs. Scientists At least two philosophers have presented substantial challenges to the epistemic privilege of science. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), David Hume argues that inductive logic is unjustified. Inductive logic is the process of making observations and then drawing larger conclusions from limited data. When astrophysicists make a claim like, “All stars are flaming balls of hydrogen and helium,” that grand, sweeping claim is based on observing lots and lots of stars and observing the same thing over and over again. But they haven’t observed all the stars in the universe. Further, there is no guarantee that future stars will resemble past stars. So how can they really know for sure? That might sound like a childish objection, but consider this: At one time, Europeans believed that all swans are white. After all, everywhere they looked, they saw white swans. The swans on the river, the swans on the lake — all white. But then, one intrepid European (Willem de Vlamingh) went to Australia in 1697 and saw black swans. In this instance, inductive logic failed. This is the basis of Hume’s argument that inductive logic is unjustified. ​