The Nature of Scientific Inquiry: in what way are scientific propositions different from religious dogma? I am not so much interested in scientific facts as the scientific way of thinking. I try to approach problems with an attitude of scientific inquiry. I believe that when new data come in, one should revise ones opinions accordingly. The results of scientific research do not require our uncritical acceptance. We can and should look at methods employed, sample sizes, margin of error, etc when evaluating new research. Nothing should be accepted uncritically. The concept of fallibility is an essential component of the scientific method. There are no absolute certainties. Some things are however more nearly certain than others. Science gives us approximations of the truth and depending on the instruments, methods, reasoning employed, these approximations will be more or less exact. A scientist must recognize that while our senses are usually trustworthy they are not infallible - testing and analytical reasoning must supplement observation. There is more than one way to test whether what one sees is what it appears. Human intuition, while extraordinarily useful in the contexts within which it evolved, has its limits and should be checked against slow, deliberate, analytical thinking. And while there may be more than one right way to solve a problem, there are many more wrong ways to approach a problem. There is more than one way to swim, but if one doesnt want to drown, there are some ways one shouldnt swim. And, outside of mathematics, though one can never prove a proposition, evidence can lend credibility to a hypothesis. In science, a well-established hypothesis is called a theory. Evidence lends credibility to a theory, but a theory can never be proved in the deductive sense. A theory can however be falsified by evidence. In other words, a scientific theory can be disproven. This is an important distinction between science and religion. Scientific propositions must be theoretically falsifiable. There must be some way of testing them. In other words, there must be some criteria by which we could show a theory false if it were untrue. Take Poppers classic All Swans are White example. You can never prove that all swans are white because you cannot search the entire universe and find all possible swans, but if you find one instance of a black swan, youve disproven the proposition that All Swans are White. Religious beliefs fail to meet the criterion of falsifiability. In Christianity, for example, there is always the underlying assumption that god exists. And this can never be revised. No matter what data come in, they will be adjusted to accommodate the belief that god exists. This is the definition of confirmation bias. I dont know of a single fact in science that cannot be revised to reflect new evidence. Scientific claims are open to revision. But this is not to say that what passes for truth today will necessarily be found false tomorrow. We can be fairly confident in the well-established theory that the earth is round or that we are orbiting the sun. The round-earth theory and the heliocentric model will likely never be disproven. Overwhelming evidence suggests that these theories are true. I doubt that humanity will wake up one day to discover that the earth is in fact flat, but scientific theories should on principle always be open to revision. This is because science is a methodology, not a collection of facts or inalterable truths.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 01:52:23 +0000
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