2. On the Scientific Method
All truths are easy to understand once discovered, the task is to discover them.
- Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
Science is not the name of discoveries. It is about how you discover them. Much of the modern science has taken Francis Bacon’s (1561-1626) method as the point of departure for further discoveries. Science is, thus, an art or a method of discovering facts. However, it does not, and will never, claim any such discovery as ultimate and final. At best, the scientific method allows you to propose a hypothesis which no scientist would ever mind in replacing if he / she finds a better one. Thus, being committed to such a method of falsifiability / testability, scientific discoveries become less reliable (and this does not imply those discoveries are worthless). This is how it works for science. And they are very much comfortable with it. A scientist, by definition, ceases to be one when s/he looks for absolute claims about reality - they call it hypothesis for a reason. So why does a philosophical or a religious doctrine must have a scientific validation? I mean, it’s okay if you provide one, but it should not be the norm.