This is the most common scientific criterion of truth, and is that used by establishment institutions of every kind in every society. It gives rise to difficulties if some of the consequences it implies are contradicted by experience. The institutions are then obliged to construct a representation of the world which denies any possibility of its own negation. Unanimity is then forcefully imposed rather than emerging from agreement with a universal rational structure. A discourse is receivable, and thus true, the moment it produces an understanding of the world for those articulating it.
Unanimity is achieved neither by pure logic, nor by force, but by the virtue of seduction.
As with beauty, and because it is intimately related to it, truth is not in itself universal. Truth is aesthetic. Attali compares these three forms of truth in physics with mechanics, thermodynamics, and relativity theories. It is the third approach, or basis for world order, which needs to be defined. As Attali stresses, it is necessary to recognize that the reality of the world, whether in physical or psycho-social terms, is too complex to be encompassed by a single mode of discourse.