Time
Time is a criterion commonly appealed to in debate, often referred to as "the test of time". This criterion posits that over time erroneous beliefs and logical errors will be revealed, while if the belief is true, the mere passage of time cannot adversely affect its validity. Time is an inadequate test for truth, since it is subject to similar flaws as custom and tradition (which are simply specific variations of the time factor). Many demonstrably false beliefs have endured for centuries and even millennia. It is commonly rejected as a valid criterion. For example, most people will not convert to another faith simply because the other religion is centuries (or even millennia) older than their current beliefs.
Read more about this topic: Criteria Of Truth
Famous quotes containing the word time:
“O Time and Change!—with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“Nor envy’s snaky eye, finds harbour here,
Nor flatterers’ venomous insinuations,
Nor cunning humorists’ puddled opinions,
Nor courteous ruin of proffered usury,
Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance,
Nor causeless duty, nor comber of arrogance,
Nor trifling title of vanity dazzleth us,
Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise;”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
“The world was not created once and for all time for each of us individually. There are added to it in the course of our life things of which we have never had any suspicion.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)