Q&A: A Dispute About Reality
A Dispute About Reality
Question
I saw that the Rabbi says that the claim that there is no dispute about reality is nonsense, and that in the Torah sages often disagreed about matters of fact. What does the Rabbi think in a case where it would have been possible to check the facts even in their time, especially quite easily? In those cases too did they disagree about reality, or is it more likely that they were disagreeing about some definition?
Answer
There is logic to that, but as is known, in earlier periods there was no awareness of the need to test factual and scientific claims. Awareness of the importance of observation is fairly late. Aristotle decided that heavy objects fall faster than light objects. There was no problem checking that in his time. Even the value of pi was known then, and it could have been checked. And likewise in the dispute between Rashbam and Tosafot in Bava Batra regarding the diagonal of a rectangle (6×4) as opposed to a square (5×5).
Discussion on Answer
Excuse me, with all respect to the author of Sdei Chemed, he is mistaken about this.
Excuse me, Rabbi, but the rule that “there is no dispute about reality” is discussed at length in Sdei Chemed, Klalim section, under the letter Mem, rule 164.