Our ancestors believed in lot of crazy things. They arrived at an understanding of universe with limited knowledge which is why their “Truth” was anything but objective. Some cultures created Gods for inexplicable natural phenomena like Rain, Wind or Sun. Some societies formed irrational rituals (that made sense at the time) to explain the “Why” associated with fortuitous events. Universe’s indifference towards humans was never on the table as a potential cause.

But some “bad apples” always questioned these “Truths”. Their skepticism towards authority, dissatisfaction at orthodox explanations combined with motivation to innovate, helped humanity to better uncover the reality.

Take Evolution. Enough evidence from different disciplines in Biology points towards this beautiful theory as not being a theory anymore but instead a fundamental Truth about life. Many hypotheses explaining diversity of life before this one were useful at a time but they were untestable and hence did not require additional evidence to support or falsify them. Its important to remember that Evolution always existed as a Truth. But it had to be discovered. All the alternate theories that humans came up with, were just wrong. But humanity of course didn’t care as it felt it understood.

This brings us to the question that is popular among philosophers: “Is all truth subjective”? Some would point out that the current method of scientific inquiry is specifically suited to human brain and any theory, evidence or questioning that comes from this method will be subjective to humans.

Before moving on, lets look at the defintion of subjectivity from its wikipedia page:

The term is most commonly used as an explanation for that which influences, informs, and biases people’s judgments about truth or reality; it is the collection of the perceptions, experiences, expectations, personal or cultural understanding, and beliefs specific to a person.

From this definition, isn’t it clear that there is less subjectivity in Evolution than the subjectivity involved in theories of life that our ancestors came up with? Most of these theories were incompatible as they involved a super natural entity playing a massive role and this entity was culture-specific.

A theory that spans cultures (planets even), something that includes macro or micro organisms and clearly provides us with conditions that would falsify it, is obviously less subjective than a theory that just claims that a magical being created all of diversity which is neither cross-cultural nor falsifiable.

And the reason it is not human specific is because it is independent of senses that humans possess. Any organism capable of seeing wavelengths humans can’t or smell gases that humans can’t would come to same conclusion if they become capable enough to study life. Self replicating molecules will be self replicating molecules. Errors that occur while replication will occur irrespective of the person observing it. Same cannot be said of theories that involve a powerful human like figure (mostly male) coming up with the architecture of all animals.

If its true that Evolution is less subjective in explaining diversity of life than other competing hypotheses, is it sensible to conclude that higher precision in understanding a phenomenon leads to lower “subjectivity quotient” for that phenomenon? If so, does that invalidate the statement that “all Truth is subjective”?