Jan's perspective

Finding truth, or true love

I once wrote a song, based on a true story, about a man and a woman who had met hitchhiking right after the Second World War. They were instantly attracted to each other but then the woman got out of the car, and all the man was left knowing was that she lived somewhere in Groningen. Nowadays if you were in that kind of situation you’d make a movie that would go viral on social media, but back then there wasn’t a whole lot you could do. The man, however, refused to give up hope – he spent several Sundays making his way to all the churches in Groningen until he’d found her. They ended up staying together for the rest of their lives.

I presented these lyrics to the late stand-up comedy legend Maarten van Roozendaal, who said, ‘You’ve got it almost right – but you should make them your grandparents. That’ll make the song three times as good.’ ‘But then it’ll no longer be true,’ I said. To which Maarten responded: ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s true – the only thing that matters is my believing that it could have been true.’

An invaluable lesson in theatre-making – credibility is more important than factual accuracy. In the academic world, you can’t get away with that sort of thing (although Diederik Stapel tried). You can’t invent the truth. Except in mathematics, of course. Because mathematics are true even if something doesn’t exist or hasn’t really occurred. A cube exists, conceptually – even though it doesn’t literally exist anywhere on our planet. Everything that resembles a cube - dice, a box of chocolates - is essentially just an approximation.

But do we invent mathematics in the same way that a composer invents a melody? Or is mathematics already ‘out there’ somewhere, and do we only need to discover it? The natural world is like that. The drops in Archimedes’ bathwater already contained atoms, even though we didn’t figure out they existed until centuries later. All reality already exists – but what about truth, and mathematical truth? And where is the truth in the meantime, while we’re still looking for it?

We used to look to the Bible for truth, but that no longer is a major draw – unless you’re [Dutch Reformed Political Party leader] Kees van der Staaij, perhaps. But with a bit of luck a church could still be the place to find your one true love though – which is miracle enough.

Jan Beuving

Jan studied at Utrecht University for nine years, completing a Bachelor's programme in Mathematics (2008) and a Master’s programme in the History and Philosophy of Science (2009). After that, he became a comedian and cabaret artist. See janbeuving.nl for his performance schedule.