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This paper is concerned with the notion of the truth of objective judgements referring to the external world. It does not deal with the judgements which are "true' in the everyday sense of the word, but with the requirements which are fulfilled by propositions apt to meet a most severe criticism.We start with an investigation of the process of accepting judgements into science, "the process of verification.' We contend that no objective proposition about the external world can be asserted as an axiom without proof; every true proposition must be provable. There is no exception for the simplest ("elementary') judgements, as judgements about spatio-temporal coincidences etc. There are no starting judgements in science.It is not possible to defend an isolate judgement. The obiective judgements are mutually interlocked. We can start a verification only in presence of a certain system of propositions of which the questioned one is forming part. The verification consists in a possibility of forming "verifications-chains' for each proposition of the system. The truth forms a system (Weyl). These chains are practically left unclosed, excepting the cases in which they return to the starting point ("cyclic verification'). These "cyclic chains' occur often in physics. The existence of verifications-chains for each admitted proposition constitutes the first criterion of assertion, "the criterion of consistency.'The second criterion is the "universal agreement' (Campbell). The universal agreement is an external phenomenon subject to certain laws which delimit the domain of judgements to which it is applicable (judgements of coincidence, number, logical laws etc.), as well as the number of persons whose opinion on the matter is relevant. We state some of this laws.Passing to the analysis of the notion of truth itself we keep the operational standpoint (Bridgman). We oppose the notion of truth as defined by the operation of verification ("operational truth') to the notion of truth defined by certain uncontrollable properties (absoluteness, invariability etc.). Our contention is that only the operational truth is applicable to real objective propositions, and that only this truth is relevant in science. Absolute truth is an idealized notion, and there is no way permitting to ascertain the absolute truth of a judgement. This last problem is typically meaningless. We close by some observations concerning the origin of the notion of absolute truth.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-52869-4_15

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