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:
“I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Since time immemorial, one the dry earth, scraped to the bone, of this immeasurable country, a few men travelled ceaselessly, they owned nothing, but they served no one, free and wretched lords in a strange kingdom. Janine did not know why this idea filled her with a sadness so soft and so vast that she closed her eyes. She only knew that this kingdom, which had always been promised to her would never be her, never again, except at this moment.”
—Albert Camus 1013–1960, French-Algerian novelist, dramatist, philosopher. Janine in Algeria, in The Fall, p. 27, Gallimard (9157)