Science: The best way of understanding the world?

‘We must constantly check the results of our reasoning process against the facts, and see if they fit. If they don’t fit, we must respect the facts, and conclude that our reasoning was mistaken.’

JBS Haldane, What I Believe

The scientific method

The best way of understanding the world

‘Science is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticised and fairly often, in time, corrected. That is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.’

Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

For humanists, it is scientific investigation (the testing of claims against evidence) that provides the most reliable method of explaining how the world works.

Science is self-correcting. Scientists can, and do, make mistakes. However, mistakes should be, and are, borne out by further experimentation. Science is fertile in the sense that it generates an ongoing programme of further research with which we can test our existing understanding of the world.

Science is also credible because it does not respond to our wishes about how the world should be. It may not allow us to see the world in terms that we easily understand.

Finally, we can see the reliable practical applications of scientific reasoning in the modern world around us. Every time we switch on a light, are cured by a medicine, or safely end a plane journey, we are provided with further evidence that our trust in the scientific method is rational.

Question: Does science provide us with the best way of answering questions about the world? Does it provide the best way to give ourselves the highest probability of our beliefs being true?