I disagree with this. Some things that people take for truth are not; however, some things are knowable and do not change. Such as: Light travels at c in a vacuum, a photon's energy is proportional to its frequency, fire requires fuel, you can't wake up yesterday, etc. Just because we better understand something doesn't mean that everything preceding it was turned on its head. Often most of the knowable components remain, we just have more and build a more complete picture.There is no truth to find. Truth is what you want it to be: omelettes, or miasma, or supreme deities.
But things like "you can't wake up yesterday" are tautologies. That's what we decided that "yesterday" means. And things like "fire consumes" are knowable by examination. The author is talking about things which require interpretation. And as much as we would like to believe that we have the correct, or at least the most correct, interpretation of these things, there's really very little reason to believe that this is the case. We build devices to investigate things based on what we believe we will find. So, it's hardly surprising that they tend to confirm our suspicions, is it? We believe in atoms and vacuums not so much because of Dalton and Einstein, as because of Epicurus, who planted that idea in our culture two thousand years ago. So, now we believe in photons and bosons, and build super-colliders to confirm their existence, even though we still can't see what's going on for ourselves. We listen to scientists theorize about wormholes and multiple universes that come straight out of the B-grade science-ficiton movies they watched as kids and nod our heads because they're scientists, and we all know science is the one true way to understand everything, just as other cultures knew that religion, or history, or narratives, or experience, or philosophy was. I don't think we we understand better than any other culture has, we just understand differently, and our own biases will ensure that we think of our understandings as better whether there's any real reason to believe so or not.
I disagree. Epicurus had a theory that was in part, but not totally, discarded. However, other theories were completely discarded because they were found to be inaccurate. Dalton and Einstein devised theories based on evidence, and performed experiments; when they were right, their ideas remained, but when they were wrong, they were discarded. Photons and bosons have predictable behaviors, and to a large extent, they do not surprise us. In fact, we build endless technologies based upon what we understand about them. Of course there are probably unknown aspects of them, but what we do know is an advance of knowledge. It won't become untrue, it can only be better understood in a more complete paradigm. I don't see 'what is known to be true' being overturned, but rather 'what is known to be true' is more completely defined. In so far as we began relying on evidence rather than thought alone. As for wormholes and multiple universes, I do think such speculation is only that. There is no reason to believe that they exist, only conjecture as to how they might. Wormholes and multiple universes don't represent knowledge, IMO, just ideas. That said, I do not believe in a 'true state' of the universe, but we have come a long way in establishing truths in interactions, which is the basis for anything knowable.We build devices to investigate things based on what we believe we will find. So, it's hardly surprising that they tend to confirm our suspicions, is it? We believe in atoms and vacuums not so much because of Dalton and Einstein, as because of Epicurus, who planted that idea in our culture two thousand years ago.