Another thought-provoking video, as always, from Jerry Johnson and the AgainstTheWorld.tv folks, about the limits of the scientific method.

I might add, that the very falsifiability of scientific claims (thank you Karl Popper), renders the very concept of a ‘confirmed scientific fact’ as a logical absurdity, since it’s always conceivably possible that later empirical observation may overturn a hypothesis or even a law – so nothing held by science can ever be completely absolute. Science always works that way, and that is why, for example, despite how strongly scientists once held to classical mechanics, and considered it absolute, it has since been overturned by quantum mechanics (at the micro level, anyway). Ever hear about phlogiston? Caloric? Luminiferous ether? Quintessential ether? Science once proclaimed the existence of all these things; all of which have been discarded, rendered obsolete by improved understandings. Remember how the dinosaurs were understood for years to have been ‘cold-blooded’? Now paleontologists understand them to have been ‘warm-blooded’. Light was considered to be particles; then waves; now it’s considered to have both particulate and wave properties. The sun was previously understood as revolving around the Earth; now we understand the Earth revolves around the sun. And so on.

There are no absolute absolutes, if one can put it that way, in science. Every scientific understanding, every consensus even, is open to the possibility of future change, as our understandings improve. We shouldn’t therefore regard scientific explanations therefore as necessarily completely, absolutely true; all science can do is provide decent explanations for how things work, but not ones that might not change, over time.

And that is why science can never, and should never, be held as any ultimate authority. There is only one – God, who created the universe, and all the laws under which it operates.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” – Psalm 19:1.