| Summary: | We may not realize it, but truth & place are inextricably linked. For ancient Greeks, temples & statues clustered on the side of Mount Parnassus affirmed their belief that predictions from the oracle at Delphi were accurate. The trust we have in Thoreau's wisdom depends in part on how skillfully he made Walden Pond into a perfect place for discerning timeless truths about the universe. Courthouses & laboratories are designed & built to exacting specifications so that their architectural conditions legitimate the rendering of justice & discovery of natural fact. The on-site commemoration of the struggle for civil rights reminds people of slow but significant political progress & of unfinished business. What do all these places have in common? Thomas F. Gieryn calls these locations 'truth-spots,' places that lend credibility to beliefs & claims about natural & social reality, about the past & future, & about identity & the transcendent.
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