h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is science the only form of reliable truth?

Can there be truth without science?

How would science go about proving that

HenryVIII had more than one wife
Your wife/husband is/isn't faithful
Science is the only way to know truth

To talk about science in terms of truth and proof is to misunderstand science. Science is about understanding, in the most objective way possible, the world and universe around us. But it does not deal in absolutes like 'truth' and 'proof' because future understanding might supersede current understanding.

Well said.

Science is a method.

If you want truth, then define your axioms and use logic.

Can there be truth without science?

Yes - whether something is in fact true or not does not depend on science.


Is science the only form of reliable truth?

Reproduciblity is the key to reliable truth. The scientific method relies on results being reproducible.

Not all scientific observations are repeatable. Many are destructive or observe unique or one off events. Also and often the data collection is a specific data set that can be gathered once but interpreted many times.

Personally I think science and truth have very little in common with each other.

Science is a mutually agreed interpretative model which often has (but not always) good predictive properties. Truth I would leave to the philosophers.

I demand that truth is left to the philosophers!

And the poets, musicians and artists.

~jwf~

They can do their own demanding.

I demand that we have ridgid boundrys of who can, and who can't do the demanding...

I demand that there be supply to accompany the demand.

It would be difficult to justify religion if the opening premises is proven.

Scientific findings have a certain usefulness when they are applied. Astrophysicists plot orbit and thrust, etc., and communications satellites can be sent up to help with GPS and broadcasts and spying, that sort of thing. Insufficiently examined matters can be bolloxed up, as with much of the nutritional advice we've gotten since the 1960s. The "experts" told us we could have lower rates of heart disease if we ate a lot less fat and lot more carbs. Instead, heart disease is still very much with us, and will remain so because so many more people have become obese.

In the 1980s, an "expert" said that you can't get fat from eating carbohydrates. That has turned out to quite wrong.

depends... what 'truth' is, and what is meant by 'reliable'....

Most cars are reliable... but break down eventually, so utilately were/are not reliable...
Truth, is only ever something 'examined' or 'experienced' through our 'percption' of it. yet not all perceptions are truth... or... is it... If its something precieved as truth, as real, then, as far as any indivdiual concerned, doing that experiencing of whatever it is, has experienced a truth... however unreliable that truth may be...

The size of your sample is pretty important. If two of the three members of your family have a genetic condition, then it would appear common, but set against a country of tens of millions of people, it might turn out to be fairly rare.

It IS difficult to justify religion.

F.

Some religions have been forced on people. Just sayin'.

Science is the method. Mathematics is the truth.

Except for Statistics, of course.

Statistics is probably the truth.