It will be, of course, a practical truth .

It will be, of course, a practical truth . The recognition of the practical implication of science, in its genesis, its applications and its justification, and the renunciation of the ideal of certainty no doubt mark the end of an era. The fallibilists, like Popper, distinguish between truth and certainty. Therefore, the critique of the ideal of certainty that characterizes Postmodernism does not necessarily have to affect the ideal of truth.

But once the practical nature of science is recognized, the truth corresponding to it is practical truth. The notion of practical truth is of Aristotelian origin and is set out and studied in Ethica Nicomachea VI, 2. It seems to me that this notion allows us at the same time to save the objectivity of science and its constructive aspect, without one threatening the other.

Within the present argument it also allows us to bring out the deep reasons for which science is a prudent activity, never subjected to a rigid method, for it is creative, nor left to the whim of the irrational, for it must adjust to the reality it discovers. It may be shown, furthermore, as an activity that makes discoveries, to be not substantially different from other human activities, such as the arts, poetry, technology or moral action, although it has clear differences of manner with them.

Now that its relationship with the Aristotelian concept of practical truth has been demonstrated, the notion of creative discovery also finds a basis in ontology and in Aristotelian anthropology of act and potentiality, and therefore looses its paradoxical aspect. To comply with the goal mentioned, I shall first set forth (in section 2 ) the contents of the Aristotelian concept of practical truth just as it appears in Ethica Nicomachae VI, 2.

Secondly, I shall show how the Aristotelian notion of practical truth may be linked with today’s notion of creative discovery (in section 3 ). To my mind, discoveries are made in many human activities: in science, poetry, art, technology, politics and ethics[^2] .

In all human activities there is a theoretical aspect and a constructive one, which are only distinguished conceptually: we behold what we make, and this beholding is one of reality, for what we see are the possibilities of reality that our action has actualized, putting them before our eyes. Human action makes the discovery of similarity and puts it into practice physically (art, technology, politics, etc.) or simply contemplates it (poetry, science).