刊行物
｜ ENGLISH ｜
Truth
Mak, Higuchi, Okita (from left to right in the front row),
Poudyal, Coates, Christian (from left to right in the rear row)
（Mak） My name is Bill Mak, associate professor at the Institute for Research in Humanities here at Kyoto University. My field is history of science, focusing on historical Indian and Chinese astronomy. I will be the moderator for today’s dialogue. Should we introduce ourselves?
（Poudyal） I am Hemant Poudyal, biomedical scientist. My research interests include heart diseases and their risk factors such as diabetes.
（Christian） My name is Marcus Christian. I'm a theoretical astrophysicist working at the Yukawa Institute. I'm interested in the fundamental theory of gravity and space time.
（Coates） My name is Jennifer Coates. I work on alternative cinema histories, mostly from the perspective of oral history.
（Higuchi） I'm Toshihiro Higuchi. I'm assistant professor of the Graduate School of Law. My research is in the field of environmental history. I'm working on the beginning of the global environmental age since the mid 20th century.
（Okita） My name is Kiyokazu Okita, assistant professor at the faculty letters, department of Indological Studies. In terms of my research interest, I mainly look at the South Asian religions. I'm interested in how emotion is discussed in religious contexts, especially poetry and drama.
（Mak） Welc ome, ever yone! Some months ago at a meeting, we came up with this topic of truth. The idea is that researchers from science and humanities had a very different understanding of truth as well as the ways to convey it. So I have invited you all today to look at the various challenges we face in our pursuit of knowledge in our respective fields. Perhaps we can enlighten each other with our experiences.
To start with, let me pose a very simple question. How do we know something is true? As we all generate a lot of information on a daily basis, obviously we want to tell the world what we believe to be true.
（Christian） In science, one relies on experiment and observation as the arbiter of any theory. While other factors may play a certain role in shaping these theories initially, they must ultimately stand up in that test.
（Okita） I think the scientific approach is to look for something universal. A scientific truth is not partial to anyone. It is verifiable to everyone. This is the theory, and this is the evidence. If you are doubtful, you can do your own experiment and prove it. But for humanities, the truth is very much dependent on perspective, and depending on which context and in which period.
（Poudyal） It's the same with medical science. It's really a matter of perspective. Also, some of it may be geographically influenced; for example, the definition of diabetes in Japan and in the US is very different.
（Mak） But the perspective does not change the facts about the disease. Why do you need to define it in the first place? A disease is just the way it is, right?
（Poudyal） Not always. There are cultural aspects to diseases that you need to consider. There are the nature-nurture aspects. Particularly with Japan, there is a different definition or cause for every disease. There has also been some historical influence, I would say.
（Mak） If the def inition of a certain disease is different, does that affect the way a researcher approaches or conducts the research? And what kind of consequence does that have?
（Poudyal） I think the treatment and possibly knowledge is very local. For example, for diabetes you have different regulatory bodies in America and Japan, and they have their own framework and guidelines.
（Christian） In the physical sciences, too. There is the issue of authority, particularly if the subject is driven by theory, rather than by observations.
（Mak） How does authority affect the ways scientists present their theories?
（Christian） In theoretical physics, it does actually matter when a senior professor has a certain opinion. You can't disprove him or her in an easy way, because there's no observational evidence. People might prefer an idea based essentially on principles, like symmetry, mathematical beauty.
（Mak） It’s rather interesting to look at these subjective factors beneath the hard surface of objectivity. In humanities, too, there can also be a spirit of science in the sense that good researchers always make the distinction between what they believe to be the facts and what is recognized to be their own, and possibly fallible interpretation. But lets go back to this topic of authority. It does seem to suggest some people’s truths are more valuable than others’.
（Okit a） In the South Asian tradition, truth is like beauty, which is in the eyes of the beholder. There is a strong sense of qualification. You can perceive certain things only if you have gone through certain training. Therefore, maybe certain information, or a certain under standing of reality is not necessarily available to everyone. That seems to be applicable to modern science in many ways, too. Like when you talk about physics, and laws of astronomy ...
（Christian） It’s a privileged discourse.
（Okita） Exactly. Once you pull out these exotic mathematical equations… It's a language understandable only to the privileged few.
（Mak） I think issues such as trust and authority are pertinent here since not everyone has the access to knowledge or the means to evaluate what they are told. As a result, there is sometimes conflict, such as those between the church and science. As late as the 1950s, the Catholic church still found it necessary to make statements such as their approval of evolution and the big bang theory as not in contradiction to God’s teaching. What kind of role does authority play in your field?
（Higuchi） I think the authority depends on the maturity of the field. In my field, namely, environmental history, there is not really an established authority at all because it is very young. Almost no one started their careers as environmental historians. Everyone comes from a different background and it feels somewhat egalitarian. As a junior faculty member, I can say something to some senior scholars because we are so eager to learn from each other.
（Christian） For scientists, the hierarchy is typically very low. It's quite common to approach a senior professor and ask any question. But I suppose there might be more deference in the humanities.
（Coates） I think when you're talking about history, the authority of the hierarchy of the academy is one problem. But the authority of the source, or what counts as a source, is another problem. Because the people whose testimony and memory I work with, are not considered authorities. Truth in the humanities, since the 60's, has been a bad word.（Laughs） Since post-structuralism, we're not supposed to believe in truth. There's not supposed to be one truth.
（Mak） In recognizing that there are many truths, there is also the idea of accommodation and to be inclusive. Does that always lead to a desirable result?
（Higuchi） As Jennifer（Coates） said, since the 1960's, historians are more aware of our mission. It is to empower people. Back in the 19th century, historical studies were all about nations, and not humans. Now we try to go back in history and recover those people who had been erased from history. Diversity is the key, and we give voice to the underprivileged and the dispossessed so that they become someone, something. But it's not really the truth per se.
（Mak） In the case of textual studies, there used to be a tendency to see a piece of writing as a monolithic piece of work. But post-modern scholars interpret ideas and authorial intention in a much more nuanced way. I believe this is a major leap in understanding. Instead of looking obsessively for an ultimate interpretation of anything, one tries to reveal the dynamics of different forces at play, the many voices of many characters, even from those hidden behind the scenes.
（Higuchi） It's like Rashomon （Kurosawa Akira, 1950）. It is a challenge to the narrator. I feel a little uneasy about the earlier thought of recovering stories from the dispossessed because the narrative tends to side with them exclusively.
（Mak） So there are power issues involved and instead of presenting the historical picture in its entirety, you would focus only on a certain aspect.
（Higuchi） It is a partisan discourse, for a good cause and for good reason. That is how the earlier historians looked at the important role that black Americans played in the American revolution. That completely rewrote American history and how we understand it.
（Mak） So, to balance out the playing field.
（Higuchi） Right. But once we move beyond that kind of balancing stage and to show the complex interactions among those people, some people would accuse someone like me, of giving undue voice to the manipulators.（Laughs） It is difficult. There's always ethics involved.
（Mak） I think we cannot really avoid this question of ethics, because in academia, scholars are looked up to as the custodian of knowledge, and thereby, also the so-called truth.
（Coates） Before we go in the direction of ethics, I think this is something that we should consider — whether things like texts and dominant narrative should be recognized as truth? I think this is really important when we talk about whether we can be custodians of knowledge, or whether there should be custodians of knowledge. In history, one of the problems there is that we tend to privilege textual sources over vocal sources - narrative. We've been talking about voices, but really we're talking about voices on the page.
（Higuchi） It's because those who provide testimonies have their own versions of truth and stories. That's why it's difficult for the narrator to represent himself…
（Christian） But this is not the interpretation of the testimony, right? It is about how you assemble the texts or documents in the first place, no?
（Higuchi） But that takes us back to the problem of authority. As an academic, I can insist that my way is more impartial and objective. But, that objective approach cannot really capture the real experience of it. It is a problem; we can't just claim that we historians know best.
（Coates） I think that maps onto some of the issues in the sciences about provability and absences, right?
（Christian） That's right. In the sciences, we are interested in fundamental theories, which make a statement about an infinite number of instances, which you can never possibly test empirically. But one counter- example is enough to disprove a universal statement. Therefore the common wisdom in the sciences is that a theory should be posed in such a way that it can be falsified. But in reality that is not always the case. There is always a hard core in science which is kept by the convention of the community as the immutable part.
（Poudyal） With the life sciences, we are now moving into a phase where we consider truth as constant. There is no question there. At this point in time, with what I have, this is my interpretation.
（Mak） It sounds like what you hear when you go to the doctor. This is the best I can do for you.
（Laughs） We have been talking about the issue of authority and how that may affect the way truths are presented. How does that apply to you?
（Poudyal） If you put a strong hierarchy with authority and a custodian of knowledge together, you tend to have that very rigid system that we currently have. All life sciences have this structure of experts. That automatically leads to the scenario where you have strong authority for everything, for all disciplines within the big discipline.
（Higuchi） Medicine, historically speaking, started out as an art. So, it is no wonder medicine still tends to be very hierarchical and authoritative. Medical doctors can make some general statements as the truth, but at the same time, it wouldn't solve your ultimate problem, which is how to save the patient. So that's where the authority and trust really come in. It's just one event, not repeatable.
（Mak） How about in the case of the religious texts? As the authority from an academic point-of-view, how do you deal with those with the background of religious authority?
（Okita） There could be conflict. You need to be mature enough to deal with it. Being young in certain contexts is in itself a lack of authority. You have to treat those with religious authority respectfully even if what they say contradicts the academic view…
（Mak） So would you tolerate in silence?
（Okita） You don't need to contest each and every issue. We need to recognize that academic authority and religious authority rest in different epistemology. The former is based on empiricism and the latter on religious scripture, the words of saintly figures and so on. Recognizing this difference would allow us to respect each other’s perspective.
（Mak） Let us look at the other side of the story - the untruth. So far we have been talking about different forms of authority which may affect our presentation of the truth. As publicly funded academics or more generally, as public intellectuals, we are obliged to bring to the public what we believe to be true. How do you then deal with the untruths in your field?
（Poudyal） If I say, this drug will help people lose weight, it will be a hit in the market. Maybe I gathered that evidence from an experiment on a lab rat. There is still a long way to go from that to human studies. The information is clearly untrue by the time the information is applied in somebody's kitchen. But I did not intend to give that message to start with. It was partial evidence. It takes responsibility as academics to point these things out. It's more of an interpretation.
（Okita） But is there complete evidence? Isn’t evidence always partial? The question is: when is our evidence good enough for public presentation, say in the form of publication? With the pressure to produce results we might sometimes struggle with our temptation to publish with pre-mature evidence. Have we not all experienced this? In Japan, we had this Obokata case. Why did that happen at all? A researcher told me that in life science, there seems to be more ambiguity, and therefore, more scope for interpretation.
（Poudyal） True. But with that particular case, the experiment appeared to be unintentionally flawed.
（Christian） There are cases in the experimental sciences of deliberate fraud… In the theoretical sciences, it's not so much of a problem since the published paper is the complete record.
（Higuchi） Cold fusion is a very interesting example. Back in the Hakubi Dialogue 1980’s, there were scientists claiming that they could induce fusion reactions at a much colder temperature. In the end, no one could replicate it. When it comes to science, it gives more leeway to experiments in terms of catching flaws. I think the dif ference between the physics case and the Obokata case is how closed, exclusive the research community is. For Obokata, it has a lot to do with the first authorship, the patent and so on. At around the same time, a similar thing in experimental physics could have been a scandal, i.e., the discovery of something faster than the speed of light. But, it was not a scandal, because the data was open. Everybody just jumped at it, and tried to figure out if it is true or not.
（Mak） That shows how, institutionally, openness is an important criterion for the truth to come out.
（Christian） I think the point that Higuchi raised is also interesting from another point of view because it shows that scientists are sometimes pushed toward publishing before their work is actually ready to be published. I think this is partly because of this trend of economization of academia that talks about consuming knowledge, and asks for measurable results.
（Higuchi） I think everyone has that tension. You would like to have more evidence or sources examined, but in order to make sure that this paper is published before the end of a certain fiscal year, you just have to go with what you have.
（Mak） Wouldn’t you think that working in such environments, the researchers would be prone to produce rather shaky works, with the partial truth or even untruth that we were talking about?
（Higuchi） The hyper-pressure, hyper - speed academic environment, is not how the academics should be to begin with.
（Okita） It seems to me that it was because the system of evaluation has adopted more of a business model; partly also because it's difficult to judge the quality of some papers. As a result, especially for the younger researchers the number of their publications may become more significant than their quality.
（Christian） Speaking of quality, it often isn't easy to say what the impact of the paper would be. In the mathematical sciences sometimes a paper might be decades old, and is then found to be relevant later for an important theory.
（Okita） Exactly, but in the meantime, we have to survive and get acknowledged. We may not be able to wait until your theory is discovered, and praised, after you're dead.
（Poudyal） I suppose we just have to work with the business model without affecting the quality of our research. With this amount of money, and this amount of time, I can achieve what I can and continue. In the context of truth, my hypothesis is this: it's true or false, right? That becomes a dynamic concept, and might change, update every five years. As long as we maintain the continuity, we should be fine. The issues Higuchi described arise only if you cannot maintain such continuity in your work.
（Mak） When you produce your research results, do you always have that continuity in mind? Or do you worry who is going to use it, or how it is going to contribute to your field? In humanities, researchers are always accused of producing something that no one cares about, and that has no impact on society. Do the scientists not succumb to this kind of utilitarianism critique?
（Poudyal） I think it's very tricky nowadays because the research data is easily accessible. It's very important how you word your results because that information goes to a lot of people. We have to be responsible, keeping in mind how the media is going to take this result, especially because this can have a lot of health impacts for people.
The biggest thing at the back of my head used to be, at one point, "How will this get me the next grant?" But now it's more like, "How will this be perceived by somebody who is interpreting my work?"
（Christian） Would you be held personally responsible?
（Poudyal） No, nobody cares.（Laughs） They wouldn't even see my name on the paper, but as scientists, I think it's part of our responsibility.
（Okita） These issues with the consumption and social impact of truths may not be so relevant to the scientists who work mostly with theories. In some cases, they may be closer to humanities…
（Mak） In terms of relevance, or irrelevance!（Laughs）
（Christian） The immediate impact of theoretical science is, of course, marginal, but the ultimate impact might be huge, and an example from history is electromagnetism. In the early 19th century, electromagnetism was a very academic pursuit; it was used in the fair grounds to show interesting experiments like arcs of light, and so on; but afterwards Maxwell unified and thus created the theory of electromagnetism. Where would our society, nowadays, be without electromagnetism?
（Mak） Even in humanities, obscure ideas may end up having a huge impact on society. Look at communism or how the Nazis appropriated the Aryan theory and turned it into their ideology. But let us return to the topic of truths and our roles as researchers. For example, what Coates was saying about this issue with the “comfort women”. How do you feel about your role when you produce a paper on this topic? Are there wrongs in history that are going to be righted by your work? Will you present the truth even if it may offend some people?
（Coates） As Toshi [Higuchi] said, you're always trying to think about how to represent perspectives that are not represented in the academy, and by the political elite. In the case of the “comfort women”, academics are definitely trying to right some historical wrongs; but really when you're talking about oral histories and personal testimony, there can't really be a concept of untruth because memories are fluid. I think the format in which you disseminate your findings from oral history is becoming increasingly important because oral history and personal testimony can't stand up against bureaucratic paperwork or text on the same basis.
（Mak） Presenting one’s views through appropriate medium and manner is always important. We should definitely avoid any kind of misrepresentation as that could lead to unnecessary dispute. However, there are sometimes conflicts of interests which we cannot avoid when we present the unpleasant truth. As academics do you feel that taboos and such problem areas are an issue in your research?
（Okita） In my current research, I do deal with the very sensitive issue of sexuality in Hindu tradition. The lay Hindu people are sometimes annoyed by certain parts of my work, which examine God’s sexuality.
（Mak） What made you interested in this subject in the first place?
（Okita） To put it very simply, I think there are certain aspects of Hindu traditions that need to be addressed, and discussed, which has been swept away partly because of their colonial legacy.
（Mak） My research on the transmission and exchange of historical sciences has a lot to do with ancient cultures and the contact among them. Most people would like to think: this is Chinese, this is Indian, this is Greek; or this is “ours” and “others” have no right to talk about this. In reality, culture and identity are much more fluid than what most people think. I am often surprised to see how some academics may become very emotional when it comes to the issue of cultural identities, particularly their own. Nowadays we have a more much more dynamic kind of intercultural dialogue than before, though academic chauvinism can still be felt in certain circles from time to time. I feel that I would get into this kind of controversy precisely to make people think about these issues, to challenge people’s mindsets. Who are the Asians, who are the Japanese, or Chinese?
（Poudyal） I think it has also to do with what stage in your research career you are in because at the moment I think we can afford to take a few risks, and work on controversial subjects.
（Mak） This is a very rare and privileged time that we have.
（Poudyal） Absolutely, and I think we should make the most of it, and I'm very happy doing that. Medical science is very commercialized now, and we've got a lot of pressure from the industry or funding agencies to present your evidence in a different light. I try to differentiate between being very brave because I'm young, and I can take a few risks, and speak the truth.
（Christian） The same is true for the physical sciences and my work.
（Coates） In the humanities, basically you're always interrogating society's dominant fantasies. In the process, you're going to make controversy because the dominant fantasy is dominant for a reason. It provides something that makes it easier for people to live, and to order their worlds. People get very angry because that's something that they have structured their life around.
（Higuchi） As a good historian, I never really start off seeking a controversy, but the controversy catches me later. When I started my research on radioactive fallout in 2000, no one really cared; but once the Fukushima accident happened, everybody started asking what I'm doing because one of the main parts of my story is about low-dose radiation, which is of course as controversial as anything could be. The interesting thing is I always feel a bit of distance from what's going on in Japan. I feel more like an extraterrestrial alien coming from another planet called the United States.
（Mak） In a way you're in a privileged position because you have access to different perspectives, isn't it?
（Okita） I guess also part of the issue is that you are, after all, Japanese; so the Japanese audience expected you to be supportive.
（Higuchi） It is both good and bad. The bad thing is that I'm not an insider. So, I have to be aware not to of fend the people actually affected by the situation. It doesn't make me timid, however, because I do think if there's a controversy, there should be a third way of looking at it.
（Mak） On this note, let us wrap up today’s dialogue. On the topic of truths, we have covered more topics then we thought we would: the necessity of being open with your discovery, originality and risk- taking, the keen awareness of issues related to trust, authority and power, and last but not least, responsibility and sensitivity as to how your work may affect other people and the world at large. All these are challenges we as young researchers have to confront in our pursuit of knowledge regardless of our discipline. Let me say thanks to all of you.
