Truth: A Destination or a North Star?

For a long time, I believed that everyone could arrive at the same truths. I thought that rational thinking, embracing the scientific method, and accepting well-established scientific theories such as evolution should be within everyone’s reach.

There were times when I judged people who rejected evolution. I assumed they simply hadn’t thought deeply enough or questioned their beliefs sufficiently.

Now, at forty, I no longer see things quite the same way.

I’ve come to recognise that human cognitive abilities are not equal. They exist across a broad spectrum. We differ in our capacity for abstract reasoning, understanding complex relationships, and comprehending ideas that contradict our intuitions.

Evolution is a good example. Understanding the theory goes far beyond knowing what natural selection means. It involves concepts such as sexual selection, genetic drift, speciation, and the intricate relationships between them. Truly understanding evolution requires a particular kind of abstract thinking.

I increasingly wonder whether everyone is capable of reaching that level of understanding, regardless of how accessible or sophisticated education becomes.

But this raises an uncomfortable question: Do people reject evolution because they cannot understand it, or because their beliefs, identities, education, and social environments prevent them from accepting it?

I don’t know.

Perhaps my earlier mistake was assuming everyone possessed the same intellectual capabilities. Perhaps my current mistake is imagining the limits of those capabilities to be more rigid than they really are.

The Pursuit of Truth

These questions are hardly new.

In The Republic, Plato presents the Allegory of the Cave, illustrating how people can mistake appearances for reality. The philosopher’s task is to move beyond those appearances and seek what is real.

Centuries later, Immanuel Kant, in his 1784 essay What Is Enlightenment?, urged individuals to have the courage to use their own understanding. For Kant, enlightenment was not merely about possessing knowledge, but about freeing oneself from intellectual dependence on others.

Yet the philosophical thought that resonates with me most comes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

In his 1778 work Eine Duplik, Lessing imagines being offered a choice between possessing absolute truth and possessing an endless desire to pursue truth, even at the cost of being mistaken forever.

He chooses the pursuit.

I find something profoundly meaningful in that choice.

As humanity, we remain astonishingly far from understanding everything. Fundamental questions in physics, mathematics, cosmology, and philosophy remain unanswered. Each discovery seems to reveal new questions we hadn’t even known to ask.

That does not mean we have discovered nothing true. Scientific knowledge has brought us extraordinary insights into reality. But possessing pieces of the truth is not the same as possessing the whole of it.

Perhaps, then, truth should not be understood as a destination, but as a North Star.

We may never reach it, but we can navigate by it.

Who Is Responsible for Seeking Truth?

This leads me to another question.

If our intellectual capabilities differ, should everyone share the same responsibility to pursue truth?

Consider a scientist who dedicates their life to understanding the universe. Their work depends on countless others. Someone must prepare their meals, maintain their laboratory, build their equipment, and sustain the society in which their research takes place.

Perhaps an ideal civilisation would organise itself so that those most capable of advancing knowledge could dedicate themselves to that pursuit, while others contributed in different ways.

But would that mean the person preparing the scientist’s meals has no responsibility to pursue truth themselves?

Should intellectual exploration become the privilege, or even the exclusive responsibility, of a particular group?

I’m uncomfortable with that conclusion.

In 1792, the philosopher and mathematician Condorcet argued for the broad distribution of public education. His vision recognised differences in individual abilities without treating knowledge as something that should belong exclusively to a privileged class.

I find myself sympathetic to this perspective.

Yet I also wonder how much my thinking is influenced by the society into which I happened to be born.

We live in a world largely organised around capitalism, shaped by centuries of historical events, political decisions, and circumstances that might easily have unfolded differently. A world shaped by different economic and social systems might have developed different ideas about individual purpose, responsibility, and collective progress.

When I ask these questions, I’m not particularly interested in how to make our current society more efficient.

I’m interested in what an ideal human civilisation ought to look like.

And perhaps that requires questioning the assumptions we have inherited rather than accepting them as inevitable.

A Question I Cannot Answer

I don’t believe happiness is necessarily the ultimate purpose of human life. Nor do I think everyone must share the same purpose.

Our ambitions may differ. Our capabilities may differ. The depth of understanding we can reach may differ.

And yet, I still feel that the pursuit of truth should be a responsibility shared by everyone.

But why?

If human beings are not equal in their ability to comprehend truth, why should they be equal in their responsibility to pursue it?

I don’t have an answer to that question.

Perhaps I’ll think differently about it in another ten years. After all, the very beliefs that once seemed obvious to me have already changed.

For now, I choose not to abandon the pursuit of truth, even if I may never fully reach it.

Because while my purposes may change, I don’t want to lose my sense of direction.

One final cosmic coincidence: Polaris, our North Star, is roughly 430 light-years away. This means that when we look at it tonight, we’re seeing light that began its journey around the time Galileo was alive and Descartes was born, long before Kant and Lessing wrote about the pursuit of truth. There’s something beautifully ironic about that. The star I’ve chosen as my metaphor for seeking truth is itself a glimpse into the past, from an age when great thinkers were asking many of the same questions. Perhaps even our guiding light is a reminder that understanding reality takes time. Quite literally, 430 years in this case.