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Home ARGUMENT LIST Science Arguments (general) Is it OK to fully rely on science only?

Is it OK to fully rely on science only?

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< STRONG No. Science is an ever-changing field.

It is a revolving cycle that unfortunately can't be relied on fully. It can be relied on for some things, but not completely.

For example, almost every scientist believed in Classical physics that seemed to make sense and provide great predictions for future events. However, Quantum physics have been discovered that throws out everything we thought was right.

Favorable Theories over Other Possibly Valid Theories
Science goes on the basis that what theory has more explanation scope, more simplicity, more consistency, and more conservativeness towards other theories (like not going against the law of gravity) will be accepted over the ones that are not as such. What happens is that many theories over time will disprove the theories that disprove older theories that disprove even older theories. So maybe 50 years from now, our theories today might get disproved again. From this simple understanding, we know that science is not the best foundation to base many premises and arguments of great certainty on, although it is helpful. Therefore, science doesn’t always have the final reliable word, although it might be convincing. Even from science do we use faith.


 


< STRONG No. Consider the conflict between Classical Physics and Modern Physics

The term "modern physics," taken literally, means of course, the sum total of knowledge under the head of present-day physics. In this sense, the physics of 1890 is still modern; very few statements made in a good physics text of 1890 would need to be deleted today as untrue. The principle changes required would be in a few generalizations, perhaps, to which exceptions have since been discovered, and in certain speculative theories, such as that concerning the ether, which any good physicist of 1890 would have recognized to be open to possible doubt.

On the other hand, since 1890, there have been enormous advances in physics, and some of these advances have brought into question, or have directly contradicted, certain theories that had seemed to be strongly supported by the experimental evidence.

For example, few, if any physicists in 1890 questioned the wave theory of light. Its triumphs over the old corpuscular theory seemed to be final and complete, particularly after the brilliant experiments of Hertz, in 1887, which demonstrated, beyond doubt, the fundamental soundness of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light. And yet, by an irony of fate which makes the story of modern physics full of the most interesting and dramatic situations, these very experiments of Hertz brought to light a new phenomenon—the photoelectric effect—which played an important part in establishing the quantum theory. The latter theory, in many of its aspects, is diametrically opposed to the wave theory of light; indeed, the reconciliation of these two theories, each based on incontrovertible evidence, was one of the great problems of the first quarter of the twentieth century.

F.K Richtmyer, E.H. Kennard, T. Lauritsen, Introduction to Modern Physics, 5th edition (1955) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_physics


 

 

Last Updated on Saturday, 16 January 2010 00:52