David Mcraney writes:
In medical school, they tell you half of what you are about to learn won’t be true when you graduate — they just don’t know which half.
In every field of knowledge, half of what is true today will one day be updated with better information, and it turns out that we actually know when that day will come for many academic pursuits.
This is what author Sam Arbesman calls “the half-life of facts.” The premise is that for every domain, silo, discipline, and school of knowledge, the facts contained within are slowly being overturned, augmented, replaced, and refined — and in medicine, for example, the rate of that overturning is high enough that if you never really complete your education. Medical school, in other words, never ends.
… For instance, in physics, about half of all research findings will be disconfirmed within 13 years. In psychology, it’s every seven. In other words, if you graduated with a degree in psychology seven years ago, half of the information in all your textbooks is now inaccurate.
By contrast, the Bible claims to be the very “Word of God.” The fact that millions of people the world over have found that claim to be credible for 3,500 years proves that the truths that matter the most are not nullified by the passing of time or rendered passé by better information. There is no half-life to the truth that God loves us or that Jesus came into this world to die for the sins of mankind. These truths are grounded in God’s unfailing nature and will never be overturned or replaced.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
“For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18).
________
1. “The half-life of facts,” by David Mcraney, Boing Boing , August 21, 2017, < https://boingboing.net/2017/08/21/the-half-life-of-facts.html >.