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Underlying every “fact” is a series of unproven assumptions. Like it or not, even science requires a leap of faith.
Can Science be True if it has no Faith?
Bill Nye, the ‘Science Guy,’ asserts that “his perspective is based on the facts of life” and not on “faith-based assumptions of life.” 1 For Nye, science is the only one reliable, ultimate, relentless, and an undeniable guide to the truth and is free from faith. While scientific knowledge is the saving power, faith, for the ‘Science Guy,’ is a weft-only weakness. To see also : The ancient galaxy’s spin suggests the universe’s earliest stars rapidly coalesced into disks. Nye believes that science alone can save the world and that faith must be set aside to make way for the future. This is because, says Nye, people of faith “simply cannot handle the truth.”
But is science really free of faith? Max Planck, a Nobel laureate in physics and a pioneer of quantum theory, thinks not. As Planck explains, “Anyone who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that at the entrance of the doors of the temple of science are written the words:“ You must have faith. ”It is a quality that the a scientist cannot get rid of it. ”3 For Planck, faith is the axis on which the wheel of science revolves, and if one does not have faith, then one may not have science.
To show Planck’s knowledge, consider Nye’s claim, “science is the only basis for truth.” Is this idea, in itself, a truly scientific claim? At least nothing. This request is not open to experimental testing or falsification. It is a claim that goes beyond the scientific method. There would therefore be no purely scientific reason for accepting the truth of the above claim. Consequently, the claim that “science is the only basis for truth” would logically have to be false if it were true. In philosophy, this is what is called a self-defeating claim. At best, the proposal would be a paradox or a mystery, but otherwise, it is just incoherent self-referential.
Is there any such thing as the “Scientific Facts”?
Science Guy Bill Nye is keen to shape the “undeniable facts of science” as opposed to the “mere assumptions” of faith. But can science ever know for sure? He considered the asserted certainty with confidence of “the central dogma of molecular biology,” proclaimed by co-discoverer of the double helix of DNA Francis Crick as a “fundamental biological law” in 1956. On the same subject : Director of the National Science Foundation visits San Diego to talk NSF mission, investments. The central dogma holds that genetic information moves in only one direction — from DNA (and RNA) to proteins, and never the other way around. This idea was conceived as a biological “law of nature” that worked without exception and was the conceptual basis for the Human Genome Project of the 1990s.
In the early 2000s, however, scientists increasingly saw phenomena that violated biological law. They discovered that DNA can be edited as a result of life experience and that the way DNA is read depends on the surrounding environment. In other words, “the body keeps the score.” 4 With the discovery of what is today known as epigenetics, it became clear that information could be “transferred from a sequence of proteins back to the genome.” Consequently, explains molecular biologist Eugene Koonin, “the Central Dogma of molecular biology is invalid as an ‘absolute’ principle: transfer of information from proteins (and specifically from protein sequences) to the genome exists.” 5 L the history of science is complete. of such cases where scientists have found exceptions to what were once considered laws without exception of Nature. How, then, can some scientific facts be undeniable?
The Scientific Limits of Science
Uncertainty in science may be the only scientific fact we can ever be sure of. This is because science itself has discovered many areas where there are limits to what can be known through observation and experiment. Consider, for example, the cosmology of the big bang — the main scientific theory that describes the origin, structure, and development of the universe. According to the standard big bang model, derived from Einstein’s theory of general relativity and observational data, the universe began 13. This may interest you : Civic science on a yacht – how you can help change.7 billion years ago in singularity — an infinitely small point at which matter was infinitely compressed. Everything that physically exists, including matter, energy, space and time, has entered the singularity of the big bang. So it doesn’t make sense to talk about physical reality or even “time before” this point.
Science itself has discovered many areas where there are limits to what can be known through observation and experiment.
The existence of such an initial singularity represents a fundamental limitation to the powers of observing science. Any “science” that talks about the conditions that gave rise to singularity — such as an infinite multiverse or a quantum vacuum state — is not really scientific because science can never test it. To assert that science will one day be able to adequately describe the conditions “before” or “beyond” the initial singularity is not a statement based on current science but, rather, on philosophical faith.
While big bang cosmology shows that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the largest known phenomenon (the entire universe), quantum physics has also shown that there are limits to what scientists can do. know when to study the smallest conceivable objects (atoms and their). constituent parts). Classical physics, which was the standard view of physics before 1900, said that it was possible simultaneously to know both the position and motion of a given particle with full accuracy. While the accuracy of a classical physicist may, in practice, be limited only by available technology, there was no reason in principle to expect that better technology would not eventually overcome these limits.
Quantum physics has also shown that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the smallest conceivable objects (atoms and their constituent parts).
According to the standard view of current quantum physics, however, even perfect instruments cannot measure the location and speed of a body at the same time with impeccable accuracy. This fundamental limit on the accuracy of the measurement is known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. As the mathematical physicist John Barrow explains, “The quantum picture of reality introduces a new form of impossibility into our picture of the world. This impossibility replaces past beliefs in an unrestricted experimental investigation of Nature that it was based on a misconception of what existed to be measured. ”6 With quantum physics, says the philosopher of science Michael Ruse,“ we seem to have reached an outer point of what we can know. ”7
Can Science Ever Be Certain?
Renowned philosopher of science Karl Popper has shown that the most exalted status that any scientific theory can attain is “not yet falsified, in spite of our best.” 8 Scientific theories can never be verified, proven, or confirmed because an infinite number of experiments remain. it must be carried out before all other possibilities can be ruled out. Consequently, scientific theories can only be falsified. For example, it only takes one black swan to falsify the hypothesis that all swans are white. If a particular hypothesis is to be counted as genuinely scientific, it should make tested predictions about the world that could potentially be rejected by later experimentation or possible observation.
The foundation of the scientific mind is its continuous opening to the possibility of being completely wrong. In order for science to function as a science and make some progress in knowledge, science must always have humility as its foundation. If a particular phenomenon seems to contradict our best-known science, then science must reserve judgment until scientists can find a way to adequately investigate it. Science, in principle, cannot make infallible statements about what is possible. Indeed, our best theory of atomic physics (quantum mechanics) says that scientific accuracy can only deal with probabilities. Science, both in principle and in practice, can never know for sure. Thus, while Bill Nye’s “facts of life” may exist in theory, our current state-of-the-art scientific knowledge of them is average at best — and always will be.
Featured Print: Unsplash.com, Kinson Leung
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