Monday, February 19, 2007

Theory and practice

I have noticed how different describing a theory is from describing a practice. A theory is true only until proven false. It needs to be proved and defended. But when people write about what they practice, what they live, they can tell it very simply and yet it increases the amount of truth in the world slightly. It need not even be literally true - the sun does not literally rise and set, after all - but a direct observation always has a ring of truth that logical theories can never quite match.