Corollary: do we believe in science?

While we're on the subject of belief, and in keeping with the general theme of meandering up and down side roads rather than heading straight to the point, a bit about belief and science.


I blithely stated here that science is not a belief system. Given that I also made the statement that belief is not enough, I probably ought to justify myself. I'm burdened with a few ounces of integrity.


It is often argued that accepting scientific claims requires belief and that this makes it comparable with other more conventional systems of belief like theism. But 'belief' is a many splendoured thing; it means a dozen things in a dozen contexts. We need to be very clear about what we mean by 'belief' in science before we make such a comparison.


Science exists.


OK. That should be fairly uncontroversial. It is equivalent to the "Elvis exists" example from earlier. When we say "I believe in science" we are not saying "I believe in the existence of science." So the statement "I believe in science" is not comparable with the statement "I believe in God" by this meaning of "believe".


Science is useful.


I would argue that when we say "I believe in science" we are instead using the other meaning of "I believe in the capabilities or qualities of science". We are stating that we believe that the scientific method is a useful tool.


Do we need to justify that belief? Is it subjective or controversial?


The scientific method is the set of tools and techniques by which we have created every piece of technology and every branch of medicine in the modern world. It has demonstrated its efficacy over centuries of almost alarmingly rapid progress. It quite clearly and unequivocally works. I genuinely cannot imagine any way in which this massive body of evidence can be regarded as either subjective or controversial.


But ... I'm going to allow it to be considered controversial. Just for the time being and for the purposes of this discussion. That's how generous I am. I am going to allow that the statements "I believe in Science" and "I believe in God" are comparable within this particular meaning of "believe".

Corollary to the corollary.

Thanks to Robin for pointing out a further clarification that needs to be made.

There is an important difference between the scientific method and a scientific model. The method is a method, a way of doing something. A very successful way of doing something. A model or theory is just a part of that method: an idea that pops out of a person's brain and is proposed as a useful model of some part of the observable world. Newton's idea of gravity was a model. How Newton expressed that model and tested it against observation is the scientific method.

So, there is another use of 'believe' that we should address.

I believe in a particular scientific model.

Again, this is not equivalent to "I believe in the existence of a particular scientific model". Reference libraries are chock full of journals crammed with scientific models. They definitely exist.

What is actually meant is "I believe in the utility of a particular scientific model". I think it is a good model. I think it agrees with what I observe in the outside world. I think it can tell me something useful that I have not yet observed in the outside world. As I said down there somewhere, models themselves are not true or false, so this phrase should not be interpreted as "I believe a particular scientific model is true".

Very importantly, the phrase "I believe in science" is not equivalent to "I believe in all scientific models". For one thing, scientists quite often disagree. Disagreement is an important part of advancing understanding. You cannot (honestly) claim to believe in every single scientific model since they do not necessarily agree with one another.