The Search for Truth

The discussion in his book centres on the question "What is truth?" Dr. Bell traces the story of man's search for the answer over a period of roughly 6000 years, from the time of the early Egyptians until the present. Very early there arose "doubts which trouble us to-day, and which, historically at least, are responsible for the advances of recent years . . .". Generally speaking, "we see four great peaks towering above the general level of profound or lofty speculation on the nature of truth. The first of these marks ancient Egypt, say 4241 B.C. to 1800 B.C.; the second, the early Greece of Pythagoras in the Sixth Century; the third, the invention in 1826 by Lobatchewsky of Non-Euclidean Geometry; and the fourth, rising in 1930, the creation, by Lucasiewicz and Tarski of strict deductive reasoning radically different from the traditional logic of Aristotle . . ."