It is fair to say that at some-point in your life you will
have to believe something to be true; but what to we base that upon?
How do we
define what is real or what is the truth against those ideas which are false?
We really only have 2 ways we can decide what is true and
what is false and that is by;
Or
I will now explain to you why the Scientific Method is
something I personally believe in; and perhaps to convince you to change how
you approach believing or not believing in a hypothesis.
The first stage of the Scientific Method is the part where a
person makes up a hypothesis about a certain natural phenomenon.
It is important to understand that anybody can form a
hypothesis about anything; you need no qualifications to form a hypothesis, and
you need no evidence to tell people all about it.
Untested hypothesis are not legitimate hypothesis until the
point they are tested.
The second part is testing; and to sum it up quite clearly I
quote Richard Feynman –
“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't
matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.”
So unfortunately if any of the information observed
disagrees with your hypothesis I’m afraid it has to be scrapped or changed to
agree with the evidence at hand.
However, If the evidence you have acquired does fit the
hypothesis you had then fantastic your hypothesis is accepted as folk-lore!
OH WAIT; no it isn’t.
I’m afraid this isn’t how science works. If it was then we
would have to put all our faith in the skills of one person or group conducting
one set of experiments to prove one part of the hypothesis they have made.
We now go into something called peer-review.
Peer review is when your hypothesis and results are tested
by other scientists who redo the same experiment you have, try new experiments
and thoroughly try to disprove your theory.
This process is never finished and is in constant use with
ALL THEORIES at ALL TIMES.
So if peer review is never surpassed by a hypothesis how do
we end up knowing things about the world?
In science we know that “facts” are in fact “accepted
theories”. Accepted theories are theories which support more evidence than any
other theory related to the same topic which explains the same phenomenon.
Some
accepted theories are ahead of their rival theories by a long way – such as
Evolution, and are hence referred to as factual. However some theories are so
close to each other in terms of how much they explain that it is hard to differentiate
between them for example M-theory (string) and Quantum loop gravity theory.
All accepted theories are constantly peer reviewed and
scrutinized (after all disproving a theory is a large scientific achievement) –
so all accepted theories must continue to provide answers to evidence provided
by the peer review scientists.
This is a method which is rigorous and well thought out. It gives
us a platform on which to base what is real and what is not by working with
hypothesis.
I believe in the Scientific method more than Faith because
the scientific method is based on observation, evidence and scrutiny whereas faith
is defined as believing in things without evidence.
I personally see no reason not to believe in the Scientific
Method in every circumstance.
However some people still deny or don’t understand the
scientific method because it’s answers sometimes do not suit them, here are
some examples of things people say and why they are not true.
· Event A happened a long time ago and you were
not there to observe it; therefore you do not know what happened.
o
Though we cannot be certain what happened in Event
A we can try to find evidence using what remains of Event A to prove a
hypothesis of what happened at Event A and then we can use the scientific
method to find an accepted theory. Alternatively we could not investigate Event
A, but then we cannot say anything about Event A at all.
·
E.g Evolution is “just a theory”
o
Yes, but it is the accepted theory; so to say
Evolution is untrue you must find a new theory which explains more phenomena than evolution and then that will become the accepted theory. You'll get a Nobel prize probably.
Or my personal favourite;
·
I just “know” it’s not true
o
