"Important truths begin as outrageous, or at least uncomfortable, attacks upon the accepted wisdom of the time."

I will start by defining what is “truth really means”. According to me truth is what we experienced throughout our life and majority of masses are also concord with it. Often,some ideas which seem harmonious to our thought are also considered as truth. Although truth is always bitter and hard to accept, if its not supported by the society which we live in. It tends to go against the accepted thoughts and beliefs at that time. Women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, labor unions rights etc were accepted after much resistance because they suggested sharing of privileges and rights which were hitherto exclusive to some.

First of all,truth is nothing more than reality. As being human we tend to believe in what the society wants us to believe despite of having our own opinions and beliefs. I would like to illustrate Galileo's example to support my point. Galileo has known as "Father of modern science" and his contribution in the field of observational astronomy is remarkable. He supported the Copernican theory which states that sun is the center of universe.This Heliocentric theory is proposed by Copernicus and then supported by Kepler. These two men and their theories are accepted by Jesuit community. But Galileo had its own doubts,so he studied these theories deeply and tried to prove them as a truth using his first telescope. As a theory the Catholic church and its prelates also accepted it but they were not ready to accept it as a truth because of biblical passage that suggests the same view as Geocentric theory. But he did not give up and attacked the Plometical's view,teaching of Aristotle and more detrimentally the biblical scripture. Although lack of the evidences proved him wrong and he was punished for his course of actions. But his efforts and telling the truth outrageously did not waisted. As most recent science has shown that Galileo and his opponents were partially true.Galileo was right in asserting the mobility of the earth and wrong in asserting the immobility of the sun. His opponents were right in asserting the mobility of the sun and wrong in asserting the immobility of the earth. Thus, we can say important truth ,that is,earth is the center of Universe came out outrageously and it did opposed by the accepted wisdom at that time.


In most of the well-accepted social customs, which need to be changed with time, we use to notice that any change is meet with a lot of resistance. One prominent example of this is sati pratha, which was practiced in India for many decades. During earlier time when Indian kings were attacked by Muslim invaders and defeated, the ladies whose husbands have been killed in the war, were burn alive with the dead body of their husband to save them from the molestation by the invading army. This has taken the form of custom with time and when Raja Ram Mohan Rai has started his fight against this custom, it was met with stiff resistance from the orthodox class of the Hindu society.He delved into the scriptures in great detail and proved that the practice of Sati could not gain moksha (salvation) for the husband as each man was responsible for his own destiny.

But, there is another aspect of this statement. Not only implementations of the important truth are met with resistance, but any implementation, either right or wrong, are met with the same resistance.

In conclusion, I can say that not only important truths begin as outrageous attacks upon the accepted wisdom of the time but also any change in the accepted wisdom, either right or wrong, begins in the same manner. So, it is ‘change’ in the ‘accepted wisdom’, which is met with stiff resistance and not only important truth. ‘Change’ is the rule of nature and we should be prudent to that change.