Logic ignores the almost, just as the sun ignores the candle.
Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.
The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
The scientist knows very well that he is approaching ultimate truth only in an asymptotic curve and is barred from ever reaching it; but at the same time he is proudly aware of being indeed able to determine whether a statement is a nearer or a less near approach to the truth.
Our perceptions of truth are built around what is practical, not what is true. Even the smartest human brain doesn't have the capacity for discerning true facts. That's why so many of us settle for scientific facts. It's the best we can do.
Books ... were merely nodes in a near-infinite matrix of information that exists in four dimensions, evolving toward the idea of the concept of the approximation of the shadow of Truth vertically through time as well as longitudinally through knowledge.
Truth is the progressive diminution of residual error.
It seems that truth is progressive approximation in which the relative fraction of our spontaneously tolerated residual error constantly diminishes.
The great trick of regarding small departures from the truth as the truth itself - on which is founded the entire integral calculus - is also the basis of our witty speculations, where the whole thing would often collapse if we considered the departures with philosophical rigour.
