Science Does Not Provide Us With Truths
If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it — Heraclitus
Some days ago I was reminded why it is important people understand that science does not provide us with truths. At least not truths if by this term we understand ideas that we are one hundred percent sure of their certainty. Otherwise, science would not produce knowledge, but dogma. What is the difference between these two?
Whereas scientific knowledge can, whenever required, be scrutinized in terms of the rigurosity with which it has been developed, in the case of dogma, we are expected to assume the unquestionability of a set of intertwined propositions. For this reason, unlike religion, science is constantly progressing. In other words, it is thanks to its capability of reviewing its presuppositions and ways of doing things that science can always be improving the mathematical models with which it interprets what we call reality.
These models produced by science enable us to do essentially two things. On the one hand, they help us explain the way in which phenomena are related. And, on the other hand, with these models, and based on the explanations they provide us with, we are capable of predicting the way in which phenomena will interact.
So, this is what science, in the strictest sense, does. It provides us with mathematical models that help us both explain and predict phenomena. This is, then, what scientific knowledge consists in.
Now, asserting that scientific knowledge is true is a risky and unnecessary theoretical commitment that science does not need to take. At least, this is so, if by true we understand something that perfectly corresponds to reality. Simply put, science does not need to assume that the mathematical models it produces are a perfect representation of how things are in reality. All what science needs to do is to prove that by means of its scientific method it is reasonably justified to trust the way in which its models represent reality.
All that said, it can certainly be asserted that science aims at reaching the truth. And yet, all it can provide us with are no other but reasonable interpretations of reality.
Notes
If you happen to be more interested in this topic, I invite you to review the current literature of philosophy of science. All the ideas here explained are commonplace within the field.
