How reliable is science?

SmokingMan · 03-14-2009, 11:25 AM

How reliable is science? When I was young, immature and undereducated, I thought that science was the one thing that could be seriously trusted by mankind. But that’s not exactly what one comes to learn with a further education. In college, regardless of whether you take a physics course, a geology course, an astronomy course or an evolution course, your professor teaches something a little different. You’re taught that science produces neither truths nor concepts that scientists believe to be the truth. It is simply an attempt to observe our world and universe and come up with the best possible explanation that we, at our current level of intellectual growth, can come up with to date. Everything about science is falsifiable and subject to change without notice. If it can’t be tested and proven wrong, science simply does not deal with it. The theories that we hold on to today are merely the corrected theories of yesterday. Three hundred years ago people were certain that the things people were certain about just one hundred and fifty years ago were irrational. One hundred and fifty years ago, people were certain that the things we know today were ridiculous. Of course today we have plenty of those who cannot learn from the mistakes of our ancestors, and think that people that entertain the possibilities of things they can’t wrap their minds around are foolish. We’ll, the idea of questioning everything about science and being skeptical about science is actually what strengthens it. If we keep questioning science, we’ll get closer to the facts gradually. But the great geniuses of science, Einstein, Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, etc. didn’t bring us closer than we’d come before by closing their minds and becoming set in their ways, but by considering the possibility of the unobservable, unseen, and unimaginable. They knew that the moment they became biased, and stopped entertaining the possibilities of those concepts beyond what man can easily fathom in their studies was the moment they ceased to learn, and they would become dumb. So remember, when some silly yahoo tries to tell you that there’s no way that Bigfoot, aliens, Nessie, ghosts, angels, demons or God could exist, look at it this way…even Einstein and Darwin are being continually corrected today. Don’t go hard on the silly yahoos, they don’t know any better.

Mingus · 03-14-2009, 06:59 PM

Actually, Newton (with all due respect, considering the contributions of: calculus; the orbits of the earth, moon, and so on; a theory of gravity; etc.) did kind of just close his mind after writing the epic Principia because he couldn't fathom a scientific reason for the instability of the orbits when all it was was a miscalculation that Laplace caught years later. Newton attributed the stability to God.

kidflash2008 · 03-15-2009, 09:45 AM

Science is theories and attempting to prove them through observation. It is a learning process and there are many people who have different theories to explain things.

The interesting thing is to approach the paranormal with a scientific angle. Most of the major scientists just dismiss it without even considering the possibility.

punyhuman · 03-15-2009, 04:39 PM

For me, the exciting thing about learning a science is spending all your time concluding that it must be answer b, and then finding out you should of went with answer a! And how would that effect an outcome c? Science is of course the great way to pursue and breakdown facts and possibilities and mold them into something we can understand in what we perceive as a believable outcome. Though of course, no matter how much you know, you never really know how much you don't know.

03-14-2009, 11:25 AM	#1
SmokingMan Junior Investigator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 48	How reliable is science? How reliable is science? When I was young, immature and undereducated, I thought that science was the one thing that could be seriously trusted by mankind. But that’s not exactly what one comes to learn with a further education. In college, regardless of whether you take a physics course, a geology course, an astronomy course or an evolution course, your professor teaches something a little different. You’re taught that science produces neither truths nor concepts that scientists believe to be the truth. It is simply an attempt to observe our world and universe and come up with the best possible explanation that we, at our current level of intellectual growth, can come up with to date. Everything about science is falsifiable and subject to change without notice. If it can’t be tested and proven wrong, science simply does not deal with it. The theories that we hold on to today are merely the corrected theories of yesterday. Three hundred years ago people were certain that the things people were certain about just one hundred and fifty years ago were irrational. One hundred and fifty years ago, people were certain that the things we know today were ridiculous. Of course today we have plenty of those who cannot learn from the mistakes of our ancestors, and think that people that entertain the possibilities of things they can’t wrap their minds around are foolish. We’ll, the idea of questioning everything about science and being skeptical about science is actually what strengthens it. If we keep questioning science, we’ll get closer to the facts gradually. But the great geniuses of science, Einstein, Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, etc. didn’t bring us closer than we’d come before by closing their minds and becoming set in their ways, but by considering the possibility of the unobservable, unseen, and unimaginable. They knew that the moment they became biased, and stopped entertaining the possibilities of those concepts beyond what man can easily fathom in their studies was the moment they ceased to learn, and they would become dumb. So remember, when some silly yahoo tries to tell you that there’s no way that Bigfoot, aliens, Nessie, ghosts, angels, demons or God could exist, look at it this way…even Einstein and Darwin are being continually corrected today. Don’t go hard on the silly yahoos, they don’t know any better.

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03-14-2009, 06:59 PM	#2
Mingus Investigator Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 325	Actually, Newton (with all due respect, considering the contributions of: calculus; the orbits of the earth, moon, and so on; a theory of gravity; etc.) did kind of just close his mind after writing the epic Principia because he couldn't fathom a scientific reason for the instability of the orbits when all it was was a miscalculation that Laplace caught years later. Newton attributed the stability to God.

03-15-2009, 09:45 AM	#3
kidflash2008 Senior Investigator Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 1,699	Science is theories and attempting to prove them through observation. It is a learning process and there are many people who have different theories to explain things. The interesting thing is to approach the paranormal with a scientific angle. Most of the major scientists just dismiss it without even considering the possibility.

03-15-2009, 04:39 PM	#4
punyhuman Junior Investigator Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 28	For me, the exciting thing about learning a science is spending all your time concluding that it must be answer b, and then finding out you should of went with answer a! And how would that effect an outcome c? Science is of course the great way to pursue and breakdown facts and possibilities and mold them into something we can understand in what we perceive as a believable outcome. Though of course, no matter how much you know, you never really know how much you don't know.