Faith, post-modernism, science and the approximation of truth

Faith, post-modernism and science all have a different approach to truth.

With faith, the underlying premise (whether articulated or not) is that an Absolute Truth exists, and what is more that the believer has an insight into this Truth. Already knowing Truth, evidence contrary to this Truth must be false and can therefore be ignored. End of debate.

Post-modernism is either the opposite of faith, or just a subset of faith. Under post-modernist thought, there is no objective Truth or Reality, merely individual truths or realities that each person constructs for themselves. Every belief or truth then becomes equally valid, it is just as true to describe the sun as a galactic turnip as it is to talk about hydrogen fusion. Ironically enough, post-modernism does have unquestioning faith in one Truth, the Absolute Truth that there are no absolute truths. The irony is generally ignored.

Science has a third, and fundamentally different, way of conceptualising truth. Interestingly, science uses aspects of both the faith and post-modernistic concepts of truth. Science agrees with faith on the claim that there is an objective truth, or rather an objective reality, that exists independent of any observer. However science also agrees with post-modernism on the claim that an individual cannot grasp objective truth, only subjective truth. The unique contribution of science to the concept of truth is the approach of approximation.

Science does not claim to know Truth the way faith does, nor does it give up on the entire venture as a human abstraction the way post-modernism does. Instead science acknowledges that objective truth exists and attempts to reach the closest possible approximation of truth. Science starts with a model of reality. Scientists then attempt to disprove this model in every conceivable way. Inevitably, every model shows a flaw, an experiment which does not act in quite the predicted manner. The scientific model of objective truth / reality is then forced to change to explain the discordant data. Sometimes an entire model is discarded and a new model is picked up, but far more commonly the original model can continue to stand with a few modified improvements. Scientists then attack this modified model of the truth with renewed vigour. Cycle upon cycle, incremental improvements are made to the model, making it harder and harder to find flaws. Science will never be able to reach absolute truth, but it is extraordinary adept at producing an ever-increasingly accurate approximation of truth. The technology we take for granted today is just one display of how accurate scientific approximations of truth are – the scientific model of the atom does not claim perfection, but our daily use of electron flow (electricity) indicates that the scientific approximation is more functionally useful than any other statement of atomic Truth.

A Self-correcting System

The ability of science as a method to understand reality is demonstrated by the countless successes science has had in developing technology. Antibiotics, vaccination, flight, agriculture, all of these advances clearly work. Why is this? People came up with many ideas to prevent smallpox in the past, but they consistently failed. The development of a smallpox vaccine which actually worked does not demonstrate that scientists have any unique intelligence, but rather it is testimony to the power of a self-correcting system.

Hypotheses are worthless if they are not tested and then discarded if they fail testing. The process of science is not just coming up with an idea of how to cure smallpox, many people clung to their ideas of what would cure smallpox even as they died. Rather, science is testing this idea by looking at the evidence. Uniquely, science discards ideas that just don't work. The simple process of keeping ideas that work and discarding ideas that don't work has built an amazing edifice of knowledge.

The real beauty of the scientific method is that it does not depend on any single person being right or wrong, being ethical or unethical. There will always be scientists who lie or cheat, falsify data or hide experiments that disprove their pet theory. But the hypotheses that these people put forward will always be discarded, because they will fail tests by other scientists.

Best of all, scientists have a vested interest in knocking down incorrect theories. Often you will hear from anti-science campaigners that scientists are hiding data that the theory of [evolution] / [global warming] / [insert hated theory here] is incorrect. They believe in a vast conspiracy of scientists each trying to hold up a false theory for some unexplained nefarious purpose, assuming that scientists don't want to prove a theory incorrect. They fundamentally do not understand the system of science.  Personal glory does not come to the scientists who prove yet again that the theory of gravity works, personal glory comes to the scientist who finds an exception, who proves a theory incomplete, who can unravel the fatal flaw in a centuries old dogma! Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Darwin, these are all scientists who destroyed the prevailing theories of their age. Every scientist today would love to join their glorious ranks.

A scientist who could prove today that the theory of relativity, evolution or global warming was wrong would publish in the highest journals, win the Nobel Prize, earn household recognition and become rich. There are only two ways a theory such as evolution could still stand today:

1) Every scientist working in the field is deliberately concealing data that disproves evolution, despite knowing that breaking the nefarious conspiracy would earn them recognition as a leader of science, a place in the history books and a lot of personal glory;
or
2) There are no experiments that reveal a fatal flaw.

That is the beauty of science, individuals have huge power to make advances but very little ability to make delays, since theories are judged by experimental results. To reject science you have to reject human nature and believe in an alternative reality where everyone acts uniformly against their personal interests. Trust in science is not trust is individual scientists, it is trust in a system that for thousands of years has produced results, a system that is self-correcting, a system that acts as an 'invisible hand' to select only the models of reality that actually work, regardless of whether the individuals involved were motivated by a selfless search for truth or a greedy struggle for personal glory. The scientific method is an emergent phenomenon which self-corrects the activities of individual scientists to develop only the most robust theories that have so far resisted every attempt to knock them down.