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have to make what we find, be it the Great Dipper, Sirius, food ,
fuel, or a stereo system.
5
Still, if stars like constellations are made by versions, how can
the stars have been there eons before all versions? Plainly, through
being made by a version that puts the stars much earlier than itself in
its own space-time . As the physicist
J.
R. Wheeler writes:
The universe does not exist "out there" independent of us. We
are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to
be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators
... in making [the] past as well as the present and the future .
6
Truthmaking
Yet our making by means of versions is subject to severe con–
straints; and if nothing stands apart from all versions, what can be
the basis and nature of these constraints? How can a version be
wrong about a world it makes? We must obviously look for truth not
in the relation of a version to something outside that it refers to but
in characteristics of the version itself and its relationships to other
versions. Could a version perhaps be false somewhat in the way a
jigsaw puzzle can be wrongly put together, or a motor fail to run, a
poster to attract attention, or a camouflage to conceal?
When the world is lost and correspondence along with it, the
first thought is usually coherence. But the answer cannot lie in
coherence alone; for a false or otherwise wrong version can hold
together as well as a right one. Nor do we have any self-evident
truths, absolute axioms, unlimited warranties, to serve as touch–
stones in distinguishing right from among coherent versions; other
considerations must enter into that choice. Let us begin by looking
5. And this, as I have mentioned earlier, goes all the way down. Not all differences
between true versions can be thought of as differences in grouping or marking off
within something common to all. For there are no absolute elements, no space-time
or other stuff common to all, no entity that is under all guises or under none.
6. In
Science
81 (June) p. 67.
