Knowledge is not always a ‘truth’

THERE seems to be a lot of interest in the public domain about Malaysian academia after a social media-loving French professor questioned the scholarship of a paper submitted to a journal by an academician from a Malaysian public university.

Today, I thought perhaps Malaysians might be interested to discover what they do not know about the nature of knowledge and truth, and that the two may not necessarily be the same.

But isn’t knowledge always about the truth, you say? Well, the short answer is not necessarily. At least not academically, anyway. I describe knowledge as “a convenient idea of truth, valid for a limited time, for a group of people”.

What if I were to show you a red bottle and ask you what colour it is. Most of the people I know with PhDs and the title of professor would answer, “Red lah, what else would it be?”

If a colour-blind person looks at that red bottle, what colour would he or she see? Most would say grey or off-white and whatever. What colour do you think a cockroach would see? Would it be red? Silence.

What if I were to shine a different source of light on that red bottle, would it still appear red? Here everyone would agree that it won’t be red anymore.

So what colour is the bottle? Silence would probably reign again.

A scholar would respond correctly to the original question by asking things like, “What is the light source?”, “Which eye receptors of what organism are we talking about?”

A PhD graduate or a professor has the same preconceived idea of the world that a layperson – with or without SPM – would have. So what is my point? It’s that truth does not exist. Philosophical mumbo jumbo lah, you say?

OK, another test. What is 2+3? Everyone with degrees would unanimously answer 5. Now, what if I said that 2+3 = 10, would that be right? I’m sure if I ask this, my PhD candidate students would think, “Did he even finish Primary One?!”

Well, a true scholar’s response should be, “What base number are the symbols 2 and 3? Now, in base 10, the counting is 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; and after that 10, 11, 12, 13 and so forth. But 10, 11, 12 are actually One Zero, One One, One Two, and so forth.

A base 5 would be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 40, etc. Got it?

So the symbol 5 in base 10 is the correct answer to 2+3 but the symbol 10 (One Zero) is the answer to 2+3 in base 5. Interesting right?

So, again, the truth depends on which base, i.e. framework of reference, you are talking about.

History is the most important culprit of knowledge that has led to wars, killings, and atrocities. Why? History provides opportunists the chance to create stories from some “facts” that supposedly happened to rile up one group of people to hate another group or groups because the “truth” of history requires nothing else!

Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is an excellent narrator of many histories of Malaysia. He can assemble historical “evidence” and one day say the DAP is the enemy of the Malays – or that the DAP comprises good responsible Malaysians when he was part of the winning Pakatan Harapan coalition in the 2018 general election.

Thus, when he was prime minister version 1.0, he created Vision 2020 as a framework for a united and inclusive Malaysia. But recently, Dr Mahathir prefers the “truth” that Indians and Chinese are disloyal because they prefer to speak their own language with their parents and live within their own culture rather than a Malay culture.

Tun M also recently stated that Malaysia is NOT a multicultural nation but it is a Malay nation according to his interpretation of the Constitution.

I know a group of high-powered and well-financed Malay academicians whose research centre is focused on accusing the other communities of “stealing” the country from the Malays, just like Dr Mahathir said. There was even a professor from a public university at a recent forum who agreed with Dr M that the Malays would lose political power in 10 years. How is this possible when Malays are the majority community?

So, what is the truth? To an academician, truth does not exist. What exists is an assembly of selected information deemed as “facts” to form a body of meaning from a perspective or frame of reference accepted by other academicians. That is why I say knowledge is just a convenient truth for certain people for a limited time.

Knowledge should grow with proper criticism and better access to information and other evidence towards another version of the truth.

Only God knows the truth of things. You and I are just feeling our way in the dark as best as we can, and when we meet other people, we have to ask them which way should we go so that we could all get to a safe resting spot – before we begin again looking for the elusive home called “truth” until the end of time.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.