| Pub. Date | : June, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of English Studies |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJES12020 |
| Author Name | : Resmy Dominic* and M Mary Jayanthi** |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Arts & Humanities |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 07 |
The fast growing technology and the accelerated knowledge explosion that followed it have directly or indirectly created a corresponding post-truth era. An incredulity toward the accepted knowledge consequently gained momentum in every formal and informal gathering. As postmodernists suggest, the present age has become an age of hyperreality, mostly characterized by faking and simulations. Similarly, post-truth era directs one?s attention toward the probable or possible truths than the ultimate truths. Thus, this era reflects a trend where lies become widely accepted truths. Among the established systems of knowledge, science remains highly objective and scientists claim this objectivity with the backing of evidence gathered through experiments. But even scientific objectivity is under scrutiny in the present scenario. Ian McEwan?s Solar, with its sarcastic portrayal of the subjective elements which drive the objectivity of scientists and further invite disaster on the future of human race, stands as a fine example of the post-truth tendencies. Focusing on these aspects, this paper examines how the scientific claim of objectivity is contradicted by the post-truth phenomenon and how literature presents this conflict through Ian McEwan?s Solar.
o knowledge that man has gathered is final. Nothing lasts the test of time. Rather, knowledge gets updated or replaced as new discoveries prove the old ones wrong or insufficient. This leaves the contemporary man with never-ending questions about established knowledge. The questions about truth, reality, right, wrong, etc. have brought in the realization that nothing is absolute. As Stroud (1984) suggests, ?In modern, and especially recent, times skepticism in philosophy has come to be understood as the