Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going to go away.

US singer Elvis Presley

Does truth – or Truth – exist? I really don’t know. Nor does anyone else. What we know and what we believe are two different things.

What is a fact, however, is that when people act as if truth existed and that it was there to be discovered – we never make truth, we find it – the results have been spectacular. I am thinking mainly of science, although the principle applies in other fields.

In other words, the conviction that truth exists ‘out there’ seems to work for us. It is a heuristic tool. From the Greek verb meaning ‘to find’, heuristic applies to something that is in itself unproven or incapable of proof but yet is a valuable means or instrument for finding things out.

The practical belief that truth in the form of the universal laws of nature is ‘out there’ to be discovered has paid off in science. You can adopt it, too. It makes you alert to look for something and not to be satisfied until you have found it. You may be sceptical but you are not cynical. You have the right attitude.