The notion of truth in contemporary scholarship is a notoriously and sometimes surprisingly slippery one. The standard image of a scientist or historian diligently working away to unmask secrets hidden by either nature or other humans is not exactly incorrect or even naïve -- it's just, well, complicated.

Critical aspects of this issue were highlighted by David Lindberg's recent lecture on Galileo's encounters with the Catholic Church in the 17th century. Prof. Lindberg shed light on numerous examples of "the Galileo myth" -- describing how Galileo brought many of his difficulties upon himself by his egocentric and, at times, deliberately provocative actions to try to persuade the authorities to supplant the geocentric model of the universe with Copernicus' heliocentric one.

But the key point Lindberg emphasized was this: Galileo had nothing whatsoever in the way of stone-cold proof of the heliocentric theory. Indeed, his argument rested solely on speculation, plausibility and inflammatory rhetoric -- hardly the material that should have earned him so much adulation as the standard bearer of academic freedom and scientific rigour.

Lindberg, as a scientific historian, naturally sees material here for interesting scholarship: common misconceptions, incorrect assumptions, ignored data. His job, as he sees it, is to uncover the truth of his subjects, independent of the offence he might give to some vested interest or romanticized interpretation. In this he is, rather ironically, rigorously following the grand academic tradition established by perpetrators of the myth of Galileo.

Much like a scientist's job is to find out how the world really is and not how we would like it to be, a historian's job is to find out what really happened and not just how we would have liked it to have happened.

So far, so good. But two significant issues complicate this seemingly straightforward landscape:

First, objective truth can rarely be established even when all people interpreting the events are determined to be as detached as possible. Two historians looking at the same evidence (letters, articles, testimonials, eye-witness accounts) may well draw different conclusions about the motivating forces.

In this way, historical scholarship is significantly different from its scientific counterpart: in science, one hypothesizes based on the evidence available and then creates experiments to test one's hypothesis, which then must be repeatable by others.

In history, there is only interpretation of past events -- and while one can certainly hypothesize within a certain historical context, it is hard to imagine that such hypotheses can be regularly repeated by other historians.

The second complicating issue is considerably more problematic as it is intimately related to the peculiarities of the human condition. When asked why the mythological image of Galileo's tale persists in our popular culture despite much acknowledged evidence to the contrary, Lindberg stated: "Myths make a better story."

Indeed, the power of myth is a well-studied phenomenon, and regular mythologizing seems to be an inherent human need consistently exhibited since prehistoric times.

Perhaps, I suggested to Prof. Lindberg after the lecture, you're fighting an uphill battle. Perhaps the details of the particularities of Galileo's case were somehow unimportant and that if Galileo had not lived, he would have had to have been invented.

Furthermore, might it not be the case that the myth of Galileo has objectively done far more for humanity (through inspiring scientists to make beneficial scientific progress) than any information about the historical truth might do?

This was clearly not the first time Lindberg was confronted with this sort of reasoning, and he recognized the rocky shoals immediately -- indeed steered himself precipitously closer to them. Yes, he agreed, it was a problem. In fact, it got worse: imagine a hypothetical scenario where it could be proved that knowledge of the truth of a set of circumstances would somehow do far more damage (death, disease and so forth) than ignorance. Is it still the historian's obligation to reveal the truth?

He admitted that the majority of his colleagues would unhesitatingly take this view --- their job is to unveil the truth and any self-censorship that would detract from this mandate was simply unacceptable. For him, on the other hand, things were not quite that simple and he would have to seriously think about the consequences.

Perhaps that old dictum says it best: the simple truth is seldom true and never simple.