David Sendín Lloreda

To what extent do you agree with the claim that “there’s a world of difference
between truth and facts” (Maya Angelou)?

Facts and truths are concepts commonly misinterpreted as being the same, but this
could not be further away from reality. First of all, we must understand what the
difference between a fact and the truth is in terms of their respective definitions. We
can already see their disparity in the words that precede them: a fact and the truth.
Facts consist of verifiable and undeniable statements that can be proven, while the truth
is based on someone’s personal belief or a consensus of something being true, without
necessarily requiring facts. For example, “fire is hot” is a fact, as it can be proven by
anyone through their senses, while “God exists” is the truth for some people, but there
is no empirical data that demonstrates its existence, therefore for some it is not.

To approach the topic, I will begin talking about history, as I endeavour to conclude if
historical facts do exist and to what extent can we be certain about them being true. A
clear example to start with is the Battle of Hastings. I still remember the History class in
year 8 where my teacher presented me with this important historical event on 14
October 1066 where the Norman-French army defeated the English. I can also recall
raising my hand and asking my teacher “how do we know that it took place on that exact
date and how can we know how many people died and even the development of the
battle itself and the strategies used?”. One of my classmates then stated
contemptuously “because it’s in the book”. The teacher gave me a much more detailed
answer, explaining how there are historical records of people who experienced those
events who state how the battle developed exactly, and we can be sure of its existence
because of the great and profound consequences it had on history. He did agree that
most of the time historians do not know fully well what happened, even if they do have
facts about the past, which might be a date, a photo, or a statistic.

The conflict arises when we try to give them meaning or interpret them from our present
perspective, as, in the end, history is about humans and humans are complex. We can
merely attempt to deduce facts from them to try and form the most probable and
accurate “truth” about what happened. Different people will have their truths coming
out from the same facts and events depending on their own experience and their
closeness to the event itself. As an example, we have the Vietnam War, where the
generally accepted truth is that Vietnam was a disaster for the US and an unnecessary
conflict based on factual evidence (numbers killed, objectives not met…) but there may
well be veterans who feel proud of what they did in Vietnam and having fought against
communism. It is a fact that 58, 281 American soldiers were killed because there are
testimonies for each death and a family that can testify it, but the truth of them being
necessary or unnecessary is left for personal interpretation.

Similarly, we can argue that in the natural sciences we have facts supporting truths.
Sometimes both become inseparable, such as the law of gravity, which proven
undeniably, becomes both a fact and the only possible truth. Therefore, in examples like
this, the definition of truth and fact are virtually inseparable for the sciences.

Nevertheless, in cases like the Theory of Evolution, firstly postulated by Charles Darwin,
facts that may support this theory can equally be used to support creationism (the belief
that God created everything). For example, in the Theory of Evolution Darwin states that
all living organisms come from one single initial organism, but this first living organism
is unknown and is commonly known as the missing link. Some creationists take this
missing link and interpret it as God, using it as proof that what created all living
organisms was God himself. Due to the absence of evidence, neither theory can be
disproved. Therefore, two truths (God and evolution) come from the same facts, which
makes the seek for the truth by scientists and investigators even more challenging.

This ambiguity of certain scientific facts and the way in which theories are constantly
being disproved and renewed has a negative effect on people, creating a distrust
towards the scientific community. This distrust doesn’t make facts less factual, as by
definition they are simply undeniable, but due to the possibility of something that was
seen as a fact being proved wrong and a new fact arising from this, science becomes a
doubtful source of facts. With this, I do not mean that scientific facts don’t exist, as there
are cases in which they are absolutely undeniable, but due to our limited knowledge of
the universe and its functioning, sometimes something that was commonly taken as a
fact results to not be as such. It is here that the line between facts and truth becomes
blurrier because not even statements that we take as factual are saved from being
proved wrong and we must be careful of what we take as a fact.
In conclusion, I do agree with the statement that facts are extremely different from the
truth. All facts are true, but not all truths are facts. For example, in history, although
facts can be taken from the past through arduous investigation, the truth might be
extremely difficult to discover on many occasions because other facts impossible to
recover may be a crucial element of knowing what really happened, and even if we do
know what happened we might interpret it on different ways based on our own
perspective, which creates various truths about the same facts. In a similar manner, in
natural sciences, facts are used to find different theories (truths), but due to the
constant renewal of these, even facts can be disproved as wrong with further
investigation and advancements. Therefore, historical and scientific facts exist, but this
can be used to support different perspectives, theories, and truths, and some truths that
we wrongly take as facts can even be proved wrong and not facts with the pass of time.
This is the reason why facts can obscure the truth, because in the search for the truth
some facts can be misused or misinterpreted and some are confused as facts when in
reality they are not, leading to an erroneous conclusion about the truth and, therefore,
a false truth.