Unfortunately, this question is all too necessary these days. People, even people who think they know what they are talking about, don’t really understand what science is.
It is, very simply, a method. It is a method for creating knowledge. We use this method because it allows other people to have confidence in the knowledge we claim to have created. It is a method that makes it easy to correct mistakes, which is important, because people who use the scientific method make lots of mistakes.
It is important to remember that all knowledge is suspect. It is possible that such well-accepted theories as gravity could be mistaken. If it is, sooner or later, we will catch it if we use the scientific method properly.
The method is based on the idea that if you do the same thing over and over, and the results are the same every single time, then your theory that the two events are connected in a causal way is likely to reflect reality most or even all the time. In social science, things are a little fuzzier, because you can argue a theory is true even if events are connected in a specific way only 60% or 40% or some percent that is greater than by chance.
It might be interesting to look at science in terms of other ways of creating knowledge. People like to make stuff up, for example. Science has a method for evaluating claims of knowledge that covers that. You have to be able to duplicate any form of evidence used to support a claim of knowledge. If it can’t be reproduced, then scientists are doubtful.
However, there are some ways of creating knowledge that are inherently not reproducible. Personal experience, for example. I can say I felt a rain drop, and you might believe me because you feel rain drops, but you can never know for sure that your experience is the same as mine.
However, most people reason that if we describe our experiences in the same way, then we are probably feeling the same thing. We might then suggest that other internal experiences also have reality, even if we don’t experience the same thing. So, for example, a person might say that God spoke to them, and if you were inclined, and maybe if you had a similar experience, you would be willing to say that God is real.
A scientist would have difficulty with this because there is nothing that could be measured in a concrete way. All we have are multiple reports of an experience. And though many people report the experience, not all do. Not all seem to be capable of the experience. What does this mean?
We could come up with any number of hypotheses. We might hypothesize that people’s brains are different, and that the experience of “God” is a function of brain architecture. We might hypothesize that it is not the same experience, but people use the same word for convenience. We might hypothesize that the experience is real, but God does not choose to make himself visible to all people.
In science, you need to devise a way of testing each of these hypotheses to see if you can find any evidence to support them. The more supporting evidence, the more likely it is that other scientists will be willing to accept that there is sufficient evidence to consider the hypothesis to be true—that is; to accurately reflect the reality of the world in such a way that it makes it possible to make accurate predictions about the behavior of the thing being studied.
Now others—not scientists—have different standards for evidence. My theory is that most people are willing to accept that if a million people experience God, God must exist. Only the truly skeptical are willing to stand up against social pressure and maintain agnosticism when they do not think there is sufficient evidence. Even fewer would be willing to stand up against the vast majority and insist that since there is no very compelling evidence of God, that means that the overwhelming likelihood is that there is no God, A person who truly uses the scientific method will be skeptical of claims of impossibility. “An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” goes the catch phrase.
But most people do believe in personal testimony. They trust that others are similar enough to them that claims of internal experience can be considered as legitimate evidence for something real. Personal experiences inside the mind can be very moving, and it can be very difficult to remain skeptical about them when they affect you so powerfully. So I think most people accept these internal experiences; these unverifiable experiences; as evidence of the reality of something.
So that’s another way that people create knowledge. It has different rules than science. It has different standards than the scientific method. It is a kind of majority rules, mass hysteria, go along with the crowd form of knowledge and when I say that, you can see the problems with that knowledge. If you use the scientific method, you do not need to believe in anything. You can always be skeptical. Other ways of creating knowledge require belief. They do not stand on their own.
Ironically, it was religion that supported science and indeed, still supports it. But then science discovered some things that seemed to hurt religious truths, and the conflict between science and religion bloomed. Thus we have come to a point where many people suspect science. It seems elitist and difficult to understand and people are afraid scientists are doing things to them that they don’t want done.
So religion becomes a bulwark against these fears. It is a protection against the unknown. And then we get into trouble, mostly due to our fears of what we don’t know and to our misunderstandings about what others who claim expertise are doing. If scientists know so much, can they be trusted to do what’s best for us?
Of course, they can’t. They are human and their choices are not necessarily ours. So there is a built-in tension between people who know a lot and people who don’t know so much. A mistrust.
Science is good for creating knowledge. Science can not answer all questions of knowledge. That is because humans are not able to figure out everything all at once. We have to keep working out it. Science, really, is only a method. It helps us build knowledge. But the knowledge we make is not usually enough for us to gain any certainty about future courses of action. So we always have to make choices, and in that, there will always be room for conflict.
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