This article questions whether science can determine absolute truths about the natural world, examining the history of science and the positions of various philosophers of science. It discusses the possibility that scientific knowledge is always subject to change, just as the theories of Newton and Einstein have been revised over time. It concludes that science explores the external world, but is ultimately just a process of approaching truth within the limits of human perception.
In 1968, Jerome Isaac Friedman, along with two fellow scientists, demonstrated the existence of “quarks” in the SLAC-MIT experiment using an electron accelerator. Based on this discovery, we now understand that the atomic nucleus is not made up of protons and neutrons, but of even smaller particles called quarks. However, if the technology to analyze atomic nuclei becomes more precise in the future, it is possible that particles smaller than quarks will be discovered. Therefore, we will not be able to say that “quarks are the most fundamental particles that make up the atomic nucleus.” Throughout the history of science, this problem has been common, not only in scientific discovery but also in theory. Before Einstein’s theory of relativity, Newtonian physics explained many of the laws of mechanics by giving the existing system an unchanging concept of “mass.” After Newtonian mechanics emerged, people took it to be true because it could explain most natural phenomena. However, when Einstein proposed the formula E=mc², he revealed the fallacy of Newtonian mechanics through the concept that mass changes with velocity. Today, Einstein’s theory of relativity holds an important place in modern physics, but like Newtonian mechanics, it is likely to be revised in the future. These past scientific examples make it difficult for us to be confident that we can arrive at absolute truth through science.
Today, we call science an activity that starts with curiosity about natural phenomena, seeks out principles or laws of nature, and interprets them to build a body of knowledge. As we discussed earlier, it’s hard to say for sure that we can arrive at absolute truths or laws of the natural world through science, so how should we understand and accept science?
Before answering this question, we need to look at the different perspectives on science. Many philosophers of science have tried to analyze the development and meaning of science and give it more credibility by proposing their own scientific methodologies in order to ensure the proper development of science. The earliest representatives of scientific methodology are the inductivists, centered around Francis Bacon. They sought to generalize observable results through the human senses to derive universal truths. However, the methodology proposed by inductivists was criticized for its limitations, as scientific laws or theories can be overturned by exceptional cases, and observation itself cannot precede a particular theory.
On the other hand, disproversialists argued that scientific theories require hypotheses that are highly disprovable, and that theories based on these hypotheses can lead to more convincing science. For example, if we have the hypothesis “Mars travels around the sun in an elliptical orbit” and the hypothesis “All planets travel around the sun in elliptical orbits,” disproving the first hypothesis will affect the second, but not vice versa. Disproversialists argue that the second hypothesis is more disprovable than the first and can explain more phenomena, so the theory based on it is a better theory. However, even scientific theories based on disprovability cannot rule out the possibility of new theories emerging, and they do not fully overcome the limitation of induction, which is that observations are dependent on theories. Even Karl Popper, the leading philosopher of disproversialism, emphasized that scientific knowledge developed by the disprovable method is only an approximation of the truth, not an absolute truth.
So, we’ve seen the various scientific methodologies proposed by philosophers of science, but they are only approaches to the right way to do science. Even their methodologies have limitations in terms of clarifying the principles and truths of the natural world. Given these limitations in scientific methodology, we are faced with the question of whether science can give us an absolute understanding of the principles of the external world. Newton’s mechanics was a theory that could accurately capture the principles of nature with the measurement technology of the time, but as measurement technology improved, quantum theory and relativity emerged and ran into the limitation of not being able to explain the principles of the microscopic world. So, are there absolute truths that can clearly define the natural world?
Current philosophers’ views on science are broadly divided into two camps: realism and instrumentalism. Realists see the purpose of science as describing the world as it really is: a scientific theory is a correct description of the world as it exists independently of us, and is true if it is consistent with the way the world exists. Instrumentalists, on the other hand, view scientific theories as useful devices that connect observable situations. Instrumentalists view scientific theories and discoveries as nothing more than fiction, arguing that they are merely a means of understanding nature. As such, instrumentalists, unlike realists, reject the concept of absolute truth or are not concerned with it. While realists also seek absolute truth, it is unlikely that the scientific theories we deem correct are an exact match for the real world, meaning that no matter which position an individual takes, it is difficult to say that science has perfectly identified absolute truth.
The reality is that finding absolute truths about the external world is very difficult. From Western natural philosophers to many modern philosophers, we have borrowed from human reason and the absolute power of God to find absolute truth, but we have never found a complete answer. Science was a tool that was presented to overcome the limitations of traditional philosophy, which attempts to explore truth through reason and logic, but it is also incomplete. In the end, we must recognize that science relies on our sensory organs and the technology that complements them to define the principles and truths of nature within “human limits.” We must also remember that science is merely a process of building theories based on humanly acceptable concepts whenever we discover new natural phenomena. Keeping this in mind will go a long way toward guarding against blind faith in science.
