How should we view science?

In this blog post, we’ll explore whether we can reach absolute truth through science.

 

In 1968, Jerome Isaac Friedman, along with two fellow scientists, demonstrated the existence of “quarks” in the SLAC-MIT experiment using an electron accelerator. Based on this discovery, we now say that atomic nuclei are not made of protons and neutrons, but of smaller particles called quarks. However, if the technology to analyze atomic nuclei becomes more precise in the future, particles smaller than quarks may be found. Therefore, we cannot say with certainty that ‘quarks are the most fundamental particles that make up the atomic nucleus’. If we look at the history of science, the same problem arises not only in terms of scientific discoveries but also in terms of theories. Before the advent of Einstein’s ‘theory of relativity’, Newton’s physics gave the existing system of physics an unchanging property called ‘mass’, which led to many mechanical laws. After Newtonian mechanics emerged, people believed it to be the truth because it was able to explain most of nature’s systems. But then Einstein proposed the equation E=mc², and showed that Newtonian mechanics was in error because it was a new theory that was completely different from Newton’s system of ‘mass changes with relative velocity’. Today, Einstein’s theory of relativity enjoys tremendous status and recognition in modern physics, but even this theory may meet the same fate as Newton’s mechanics in the future. Looking at past scientific examples like these, we can’t confidently say that we can reach absolute truth through science.
Today, we refer to science as an activity that starts with curiosity about natural phenomena, seeks to discover principles or laws of nature, and interprets them to create a body of knowledge. As we discussed earlier, we can’t say with certainty that we can arrive at absolute truths or laws about the principles of the natural world through science, so how should we view science?
Before addressing this question, we need to look at the different perspectives on accepting science. Many philosophers of science have attempted to analyze how science has developed, and to empower it with their own scientific methodologies in order to ensure the proper development and direction of science. Early inductivists, led by philosopher Francis Bacon, sought to generalize findings that can be observed through the human senses to derive universal truths. However, the scientific methodology proposed by inductivists was criticized for the fact that scientific laws and theories break down in the face of exceptions, and that observation itself cannot precede theory. On the other hand, disproversialists argued that the more disprovable the hypotheses needed to derive a scientific theory, the better the hypothesis, and the more convincing the scientific theory derived from that hypothesis. For example, if we have the hypothesis “Mars travels around the sun in an elliptical orbit” and the hypothesis “All planets travel around the sun in elliptical orbits,” then a disproof of the first hypothesis would be a disproof of the second hypothesis, but not vice versa. According to the disproversialist position, the second hypothesis is more disprovable than the first, and the scientific theory derived from it is a better theory because it can explain more phenomena. However, even scientific theories based on disprovability do not overcome the limitations of traditional induction: there is always the possibility that new theories will emerge, and observations themselves are theory-dependent. Karl Popper himself, the poster boy for the disproversialists, emphasizes that even scientific knowledge developed through the disproving method is an approximation of truth, not absolute truth.
Above, we’ve outlined the scientific methodologies advocated by philosophers of science, but these are only their methods for approaching science in the right way. Even their methodologies fail to clearly define the principles and truths of the natural world. Given these limitations of scientific methodology, we are faced with the question of whether science can ever give us an absolute understanding of the principles of the external world. While Newton’s mechanics was a theory that could pinpoint the principles of nature with the measurement technology available at the time, the rise of quantum and relativistic theories, along with advances in measurement technology, left the principles of the microscopic world unclear. So, are there absolute truths that can define the natural world?
Currently, philosophers of science are divided into two main camps: realist and instrumentalist. Realists see the purpose of science as a true description of how the world is. In other words, realists say that a scientific theory is a correct description of the world as it exists independently of us, and that a scientific theory is true if it is consistent with how the world exists. Instrumentalists, on the other hand, say that the purpose of science is to create theories as convenient devices that allow us to make connections between observable situations and other observable situations. In other words, for instrumentalists, scientific theories and discoveries are just fiction, just a means of understanding the natural world. Unlike realists, instrumentalists reject the idea of absolute truth, or are not interested in the idea of absolute truth. Even if we understand the position of the realists, we can say that even scientific theories, which we think we have described correctly, do not accurately describe the world as it actually exists independently of us. In other words, regardless of our individual positions, we cannot say that through science we have finally found absolute truth.
As mentioned earlier, it is actually very difficult to find absolute truths about the external world. Western natural philosophers and many modern philosophers have tried to find absolute truth, even borrowing from the power of human thought and the absolute power of God, but they have not found a complete answer. Science was proposed to overcome the limitations of traditional philosophy, which seeks to find truth through thought and logic, but it is also not complete. After all, science is based on our sense organs and the technology that complements them, and it is important to recognize that it defines the principles and truths of nature in terms of “human good”. We should also always keep in mind that whenever science discovers a new natural phenomenon, it is merely a process of finding a concept that is acceptable to the human good, and then building a new theory based on that concept. Keeping this in mind should be enough to help us guard against blind faith in science.