Science is based on observation.
We see things happening again and again and eventually come to believe that they’ve always been that way and will always be that way. When we decide that a certain action or reaction happens consistently enough, we call it a LAW. The law of gravity, for instance, tells us that an object will fall to the earth if nothing interferes with it. In fact, the law tells us that it will ALWAYS happen, it always HAS happened, and we can even predict with accuracy how fast it will fall and for how long.
We have some confidence riding on these Laws. If science were a casino, we’d be pushing all of our chips onto that square on the table labeled, “Laws of Physics.” The people watching may gasp, seeing us betting everything like that, even our very lives, but we’d just smile and say, “Let it ride.”
Or whatever people say in a casino. I don’t watch enough James Bond films to actually know.
As an example, having seen water boil at 100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) we assume that water has always boiled at 100°C and that it always will into the future. We believe this enough to teach it in school as a “scientific fact” even though the past and the future are both unobservable and untestable.
We cannot go back into the past to measure the speed of every dropped object, or even to verify that they all fell to the ground. Nor can we travel into the future to see at what temperature water will boil, if it even boils at all.
We must believe without ever seeing and without ever touching or measuring the events in the past and the future that the LAWS OF SCIENCE apply now as they did in the past and will in the future. If science were merely the observation of events in the present, then we could say no more, but science… excuse me, “SCIENCE!” insists that it can tell us how everything has ALWAYS been and how it will ALWAYS be.
Therefore science itself is based on untestable unobservable beliefs. SCIENCE is a belief system. SCIENCE may involve a lot of faith in the unseen, untestable, and unverifiable. SCIENCE may even… dare I say it? … be it’s own religion?
Uh oh. Now I’ve said too much. Those big bouncers at the door of the science casino are headed this way, and I think they’re wearing brass knuckles. Of science.
Or maybe just brass. Either way, I’m getting out of here.