Science

“All generalisations are false, including this one.”

                                                                                       – Mark Twain

I really felt like writing something new for this blog today, and I also have been feeling philosophical of late. I particularly enjoy harassing science with critical philosophy. So, this post will be about some of the general shortcomings of the scientific method.

Correction, it will only be about one: everything in science is fundamentally based on generalisation.

There you go!

(That sounds a bit harsh and radical, don’t you think? Agreed! Science is indeed fundamentally not-true, but that is only because science is only concerned with things that cannot be proven beyond questioning. This is because the only things we can know are absolutely true are things that are true per se (in themselves), e.g. things that are true by definition – a classical example being that ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’: this is always true because if it is not a man and not unmarried, then it is not a bachelor – and such truths, albeit true, are not particularly useful to us! So, science takes on the tough job of approaching the truths we never can be 100 % sure of – not until we have screened the entire universe for every single example of the thing we are examining, and that is just not feasible.

In time, hopefully within a week or so, I hope to have time to prepare a proper account for the scientific method and its philosophical value. What I wrote here was mostly just to introduce the topic, and hopefully stir your minds a bit. The purpose of sharing these thoughts is: first, because I resent how so many blindly accept scientific ‘facts’ as fully true, when they, at best, may be true in most cases, or true beyond reasonable doubt, such as the theory of evolution by natural selection; second, because I keep being told about the scientific method in university lectures, but no one has really approached the subject of what it really means – what are they really doing? what is good about it? what is lacking? – all we have been given are descriptions, no critical thinking, so I wish to illustrate some of the philosophical pits of science.)

 
Ps. I angled this post to one point of view only: the one emphasising science's weaknesses. I did this maninly to provoke any kind of response, and indeed, it sparked a long debate on FaceBook, so now I am satisfied! The rest of you, rest assured, that I will present the strengths of science as well in the follow-up post! Because, regardless of the undeniable (when you understand them) problems with the scientific method, it is not all that off after all, and it is the best we've got! (so far...)