Reality and Science
Most people, of
course, believe that there is a reality. Do you want to know what that reality
is? Scientific evidence says what it is, but in my just finished chapter on the
Scientific View of Reality, the bottom line is that Science doesn’t really
know. To see how Science doesn’t know, let’s just look at one concept over the
years — gravity.
Aristotle’s worldview
was predominant for almost 2000 years — the earth was the center of the
universe and things tended to fall toward the center of the universe.
Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, however, showed that the earth wasn’t even the
center of our solar system, much less the universe.
Next came Newton’s law
of universal gravitation which stated matter attracts matter in the force
proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the
square of the distance between them. This is still what most of us believe
about gravity today although that view has been obsolete since Einstein came up
with General Relativity.
General Relativity
says that gravity is essentially warped spacetime so any massive object
generates a gravitational field by warping the geometry of the surrounding
spacetime. Einstein generated his theory about 100 years ago but scientists are
now changing their theories about things as fast as every 25 years.
Modern physicists are
trying to generate a theory of everything by reconciling the four forces of
nature. These theories are all over the place and are constantly changing but
the latest idea about gravity is that it’s a particle called a graviton.
If you’d like to know
more about how science cannot explain reality, then listen to The Great Courses
course entitled “Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It” by
Professor Steven L. Goldman. He has the same conclusion that science probably
can never know reality but then of course, tries to justify what they do know.
The bottom line is
that science progresses by first making some assumptions that seem logical and
that seem to describe the real world. Then someone develops a theory that seems
to explain and predict what is known and observed. Someone comes along later,
however, and shows that the basic assumptions behind the current theory are no
longer valid and they need to be replaced. Someone else then comes up with new
assumptions and a new theory and if it predicts well, then the new
assumptions/theory becomes the new standard for reality — until it too is
replaced eventually.
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