Does Science Give Us Knowledge?

The world is governed by the rules of physics, chemistry, biology and all of those well-known, well-studied facets of science. The lives of hundreds of scientists have been dedicated to this long-lived pursuit of knowledge and truth. However, though science has inseparably been linked to fact in society, does it truly bring us closer to absolute truth?

The Austrian philosopher Karl Popper struck a chord in the scientific community when he presented his ideas about what the subject of science sets out to achieve. He believes that to be justified as a true science, the new concepts and hypotheses that are continually being made must be proven true through falsification instead of confirmation. This means that science is all about trying to prove yourself wrong. Only when the given hypothesis has withstood many trials and tribulations can it be said to be supported and true. Popper believes that the errors and falsified hypotheses all eventually lead us closer to the truth we seek. However, this also implies that what was once seen as the ‘truth’ can change and become varied. In other words, the possibility of a hypothesis being false is ever-present in each and every concept we take for granted. And so, it seems that absolute truth is not possible, even in the field of science. However, Popper was not looking for certainty in his ideas, and believed that certainty actually narrowed one’s mind when learning. Instead, the process of falsification will allow the truth to be as close as it could possibly be while simultaneously being open to future developments and changes.

Massimo Pigliuci talks of Popper’s beliefs being put to the test. In the scientific community, debates over the reliability of falsification, when it comes to differentiating between science and pseudoscience, is believed by some to be insufficient. The scientists who reject Popper’s ideas argue that it does not provide enough reliability to separate these two seemingly simple ideas. Pigliuci, however, claims that they should be seen as ‘family resemblance concepts’ instead, an idea that Ludwig Wittgenstein thought of when studying the ambiguity of language. This states that these two concepts do share similarities however, despite that, has its own unique qualities. This is what creates the blurring effect between the two ideas and why it seems to be difficult to separate them Pigliuci also recognises that there should be no boundaries to definitively enclose the definition of these two words, only the boundaries we create in order to suit a specific purpose. However, I believe that this would almost leave things as unresolved. If these boundaries and malleable and varied, science and pseudoscience would forever be muddled and mixed up with each other.

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