7. POAMS and scientific truth

To say there is no such thing as truth and hold that to be true is, of course, a complete contradiction. Logically, then, there has to be truth, since to deny it creates nonsense. So far as POAMS is concerned, however, that is as far as it goes. Absolute truths, claimed by physicists, cosmologists, logicians, mathematicians, metaphysicians or whoever are no part of POAMS, whose empiricist programme has been expressed as: 'I don't know what's true, but I sure as hell can suss-out what isn't!'

Truth is never easy to determine, but error certainly is. Its signature is unmistakable. It consists of the sort of logical inconsistency and contradiction that even children can recognise. Truth, for POAMS is therefore no more than what remains when you remove error. In rooting out error, POAMS maintains the programme of scepticism that has always been the very lifeblood of science.

But while, for POAMS, logic and mathematics are an integral part of that empirical programme, there are no truths of Pure Logic or Pure Mathematics. Neither logic nor mathematics exist apart from the ideas they serve to organise, and insofar as these ideas are never God-given but always finite and fallible, then so are the products of logic and mathematics. 'Universes' constructed of pure logic or mathematics may invite speculative interest, but they can have no truth or validity, far less any reality, in themselves. So far as POAMS is concerned they can never be more than theoretical 'card-castles' whose 'elegance' alone fails to support them as soon as the cards on which they stand are moved or changed.

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