SEEDS of TRUTH:

Truth is an extraordinary idea, rooted in an unattainable idealism and buried deeply within any belief or statement however misguided or untrue. There, we may find a grain of truth buried within, as there are layers of meaning within all complex sentiments: the oyster is the pearl’s autobiography, the pearl, that of a an irritating grain of sand.   Recalls Camus’  “in the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer”[i]  

(the idea was enlarged by Giovanni Gaetani (2015):[ii] ‘My dear, in the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that in the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

Herbert Spencer wrote that “We too often forget that not only is there a soul of goodness in things evil, — but very generally, also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.  While many admit the abstract probability that a falsity usually has a nucleus of reality, few bear this abstract probability in mind when passing judgement on the opinions of others.”  (from 1880. First Principles, Fifth London Edition, Part I. The Unknowable.  Chapter I, “Religion and Science.”)

And the seed may be an opposite: The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.  Unsourced but quoted in Max Delbrück, Mind from Matter: An Essay on Evolutionary Epistemology, (1986) p. 167. It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr )

BUT: Contraria Sunt Complementa Opposites are complementary.  (Motto Bohr chose for his coat of arms, when granted the Danish Order of the Elephant in 1947. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr ) [enantiomorphia? Jung?]

AND: Il n’y a pas une idée qui ne porte en elle sa réfutation possible, un mot, le mot contraire. (There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.)  Proust (1925) from “Remembrance…  Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone, Ch. II: “Mademoiselle de Forcheville” (Wikiquote).

Stephan Jay Gould quotes the economist Vilfredo Pareto with approval:  “give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.  You can keep your sterile truth for yourself” (quoted by H Allen Orr in “The Descent of Gould” in the New Yorker, September 30, 2002 pp 132-138.)

NEXUS 

• SEEDS of TRUTH
• LOVE – its biological and psychological background 
• AMBIGUITY 
• KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH, BELIEFS, and REALITY-TESTING
• LOVE and TRUTH notes
• NATURAL HISTORY of TRUTH (MetaNexus lecture, Phoenix, 2009)
• TRUTH in the BRAIN Beijing (Consciousness Reframed lecture, Beijing, 2004)
• BEAUTY AND TRUTH IN SCIENCE (Overby 2002)
• TRUTH and BEAUTY in ART and SCIENCE