Friday, September 18, 2020

The Evolution Of Scientific Theories

As more sensory information becomes available, scientific ideas are adapted or discarded in order to fit whatever new observations can then be made.  At all times, there are truths about scientific laws, and every claim about science is by necessity either true or false even though it is logically possible for all scientific laws to change; it is the perceptions and awareness of scientific laws that evolve, not the scientific laws themselves.  The theories that are used to explain or understand scientific laws evolve even if scientific laws remain constant over time and space, as sensory experiences suggest is indeed the case.

It should therefore be unsurprising to those who are aware of this that the documented progression of scientific discoveries has many examples of theories that have been revised, validly criticized, or rejected altogether.  The time and place in which a person lives will determine the major consensus about scientific theories that they will be exposed to.  It follows that anyone who truly thinks that their generation has embraced or identified scientific theories that are "obviously" true has little to no understanding of the actual nature of the scientific method.

Someone who believes whatever predominant scientific theories are associated with their era is guilty of assumptions as it is, as only that which is logically demonstrated can be believed without error, and all aspects of science beyond one's own immediate sensory perceptions and the intersection of logic and scientific epistemology are philosophically up in the air.  However, such a person has not only made the logical mistake of making assumptions, but they have also let the chance circumstances of their birth, geography and time, dictate what they believe about science.

They might look back at former scientific ideas in the historical record and scoff at how "primitive" or "false" past consensus has been, at the same time ironically accepting a consensus that they cannot verify and that is likely to itself be rejected eventually.  If they truly care about scientific accuracy, then, they will abstain from holding to scientific ideas that cannot be proven to correspond to reality beyond their perceptions.  It is one thing to believe that one is perceiving a phenomena like gravity, and immediate perceptions cannot be illusory.

It is another thing entirely to believe whatever incomplete, unprovable theories are attributed by others to the empirical phenomena that one's own self directly perceives.  A slave to cultural circumstances accepts scientific paradigms even if he or she understands their speculative, unverifiable nature, whereas a slave to truth does not even bother to credit science with anything more than probabilistic, perception-based practicality.  A consistent seeker of objective truth looks to reason, while a halfhearted or misguided seeker of truth looks to a lesser tool such as science.

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