The Epestimic Uselessness Of Science

After several years of admiring science and viewing it as a very significant part of epistemology, I have realized that, in an ultimate sense, science is epistemically useless.  Useless?  But I'm writing this blog post using the results of science, right?  So how can I declare science epistemically useless?  Well, the only way to know something is true is to know it with 100% certainty, something science can never grant.  Not only that, but there are many aspects of reality that science by its very nature can never access.  All I am covering here is the fact that science cannot ever prove anything and that it is not the true basis of knowledge, meaning I am emphasizing that it is useless to appeal to science for proof of anything and that science does not represent the core of knowledge about reality.  Now, I love science and admire its many facets like cosmology, quantum physics, paleontology, astronomy, and geology.  I plan on incorporating scientific beliefs into certain future posts--as I said, all I mean when I call science epestimically useless is that it is impossible to prove a claim using science.  I am not disrespecting science, just establishing that it does not have the epistemic power and status the western world in modern times can tend to perceive it as possessing.

Science cannot prove:

1. My own existence.  Science can never even confirm to me that I exist.  A priori reflection, logic, and experience of my own consciousness prove to me that I (my mind) exist, not anything even remotely connected to a scientific experiment or hypothesis.
2. The reliability of my senses.  Science can never prove that my senses are reliable and that I am perceiving the external world correctly.  To engage in the scientific method, I have to simply act as if or assume that my senses are reliable.  Since I could be a brain in a vat or asleep in the Matrix, anything I seem to see or touch is possibly not a reflection of actual reality and thus, since I can only engage science through my perceptions, I never have any confirmation that science itself has revealed any grand truth about the universe or reality.
3. The axiomatic nature of logic and math.  Logic (and by extension its counterpart math) is self-evident, self-verifying, and axiomatic.  However, science can do nothing apart from logic because science does not possess these properties.  Science relies on logic, but logic relies on nothing but its own self-evidence.  A priori reflection, syllogisms, and axioms prove logic is true by necessity, but science cannot boast this.
4. Predictions of future occurrences.  Just because in the past an experiment has always produced the same results does not mean it will always happen that way.  Science can never prove that its own most foundational theories and ideas are valid or will always remain constant.  In fact, some of the most dramatic scientific breakthroughs have occurred when traditional scientific views of the day were completely reconfigured due to a new perspective.
5. Information about historical events.  No one can replicate historical events in a laboratory and thus history falls outside the domain of science.  To discover historical facts we must find physical documents or evidence left behind by people in the past, and scientific experiments have nothing to do with this.
6. Moral claims.  Morality has to do with how things should or shouldn't be, while science exclusively investigates how things are in the material world.  Morality is an immaterial concept.  Science is of no use in determining moral judgments due to the naturalistic fallacy and the inability of scientific experiments to even remotely come near to providing insight into anything other than the way the world appears to be in a physical sense.
7. Theological claims.  Specific theological claims fall outside the domain of science into the territory of philosophy.  Regarding arguments for the existence of God, science can offer some very compelling assistance.  For instance, there seems to be immense evidence for the Big Bang, meaning that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning, which would necessitate an external uncaused cause because the universe did not always exist and therefore needed a cause.  However, grounding this argument--the Kalam cosmological argument--merely in science will never elevate this from an argument to a proof.  When one exchanges the scientific evidence for mathematical and logical proof that any universe cannot be eternal in the past due to the logical and mathematical impossibility of such a universe, the argument becomes a proof.
8. Itself.  There is no scientific experiment that demonstrates that science is either reliable or that it can prove anything.  Doubters should see number 2 above if they want more proof of this.  Not only can no scientific experiment prove that the scientific method is valid, but if I have no way to know for sure even through logic or experience that my senses perceive things as they are there is no way that science, which I can only participate in by using my senses--which are unverified, can prove that my perceptions of the external world or of the experiments themselves are accurate.



Ultimately, science is of little to no value when it comes to truly
determining if an idea about the universe or almost
 anything is true.  Every scientific belief is open to
potential revision or abandonment and science operates
based upon our sensory observation and input, which
neither science nor philosophy can confirm
the validity of.  Logic, not science, illuminates
 the pathway to ultimate truth.

None of this means that I don't appreciate science or that I don't want to understand it better.  Actually, I personally find science quite fascinating.  It simply means that science can never be the foundational basis for a rational worldview and that I have no problem admitting that anyone who goes to science seeking proof or absolute certainty of anything will never find what they desire.  Logic is the foundation for epistemology, not science.  Scientism is self-refuting; rationalism is self-verifying.  This post has not argued that we should live our lives without regard to what modern science seems to informs us of but that if we want true confirmation or refutation of abstract ideas we should look elsewhere.