🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE: How careful observation, strict reasoning and clever hypotheses guided the great human endeavor of science.
Scientists, and humans in general, use two modes of reasoning: inductive and deductive. Inductive reasoning moves from particular observations to general claims . Deductive reasoning works in the other direction, from information you already know to specific conclusions .
But it’s equally important to understand that this inevitable uncertainty doesn’t diminish the aim of science. In Popper’s system of “falsificationism,” the more scientists test a theory without refuting it, the more likely it is to be accurate — the better “corroborated” it is, in laboratory lingo. If it survives enough scrutiny, it earns the title of “theory,” like Albert Einstein’s general relativity or Nicolaus Copernicus’s heliocentrism.
Scientists can be sometimes too obstinate in resisting new theories. Near the turn of the 20th century, when data on Mercury’s orbit discredited Newton’s longstanding gravitational laws, many physicists were wary. Even after decades of evidence favored relativity over Newtonian physics, “there were some who never accepted it,” says Peter Vickers, a philosopher of science at Durham University. “They went to their graves saying, ‘The theory’s fine.
All that’s to say: Science is doing fine. Indeed, it’s unclear to what extent the shifting philosophical trends have shaped the course of science.
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