Astronomers once believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth. In the 19th century, scientists thought the shape of a person’s skull could reveal strength or weakness their mentality. Then, in the 20th century, many scientists vehemently opposed the idea that continents could shift. These were ideas which were later disproved.
So can we trust current scientific truths? Is it possible to identify scientific ideas and claims that will last forever and are not susceptible to future scientific revolutions? Some people will say, “Of course not.” However, my new book, Identifying future-proof sciencecombines historical, philosophical, and sociological research to argue that it is very possible.
There is a philosophical attitude that is sometimes called intellectual humility (intellectual humility) which involves doubting ultimate truth by looking at the evidence of scientific revolutions and a paradigm shift (changes in belief systems and knowledge) in history.
At first, this attitude seems perfectly reasonable, maybe even rational. One might add that humility is a form of virtue. Who would dare suggest that scientific claims supported today will still be supported by the scientific community 5,000 years from now?
People who are skeptical of scientific claims often use a simple argument: scientists were convinced in the past, and in the end they were wrong. Physicist Albert Michelson (famous for the Michelson-Morley experiment) wrote in 1903: “The most important fundamental laws and facts in physics have all been discovered and established so unequivocally that the chances of them being overridden as a result of new discoveries are extremely remote.”
This statement was made just before physics changed dramatically due to developments general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. There are many other similar statements, which show the overconfidence of even the best scientists.
Naomi Oreskesa historian and advocate of science, wrote in his 2019 book, Why Trust Science?that “The history of science shows that scientific truths are changeable,” and “the contributions of science cannot be viewed as permanent.”
Nobel Laureate in Physics Steven Weinberg say“There are truths out there to be discovered, truths that once found will become a permanent part of human knowledge.”
However, Oreskes respond emphatically: “Weinberg is a brilliant man… However, these comments reflect astonishingly ignorance of the history of science, or disregard for scientific evidence gathered in other scientific fields.” The field he is referring to is history.
Scientific facts
So, what are “scientific facts?” According to attitude intellectual humility“facts” exist only in a weak sense: they are temporary and relatively, depending on the paradigm at the time. In the paradigm shift that occurs throughout history, “facts” are often outdated, with new “facts” ready to replace them.
The people who embrace the concept intellectual humility does not necessarily imply that nothing is permanent. According to them, we don’t know which (if any) claims are immune to future paradigm shifts. Nor do they encourage us to distrust science; Oreskes was very clear about that.
But, intellectual humility it starts to look preposterous as it enters the realm of its logical conclusion. That is, we don’t really know that the Sun is a star, that the continents are shifting, that smoking causes cancer, or that contemporary global warming is real and caused by humans.
PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek/Shutterstock
In all of these cases (and many more), the opinion of the scientific community left the matter in doubt long ago. It makes no sense that, say, 50 years’ time, after a scientific revolution, we might look back and say, “People used to believe smoking caused cancer.”
If that makes sense, one might as well think that the Earth might be flat. This view goes into the realm of “radical skepticism,” where people assume that we might all be living in a dream, or in an artificial world like in the movies The Truman Show.
But what if I only think this way because I am a cognitive “prisoner” trapped in the conceptual schema of the paradigm I was raised in? Of course, it seems to me completely indisputable that the Sun is a star, and it seems absurd to doubt it. However, maybe it will not seem absurd to those who live in the future paradigm.
Observing the previously unobservable
There is much that can be learned from history. An example is the idea of continental drift, which was once mere speculation. Later during the 20th century, this idea became a powerful theory, and eventually became a “scientific fact,” becoming a scientific consensus of scientists.
At this point, skeptics might think that a strong scientific consensus proves nothing, because a consensus might have developed for bad reasons like “groupthink” (certain group thinking). But look what happened next: we developed instruments that could actually witness continental drift happen regularly real time. So continental drift is definitely a timeless idea: we can watch it happen firsthand.
Such developments are critical to demonstrating that a strong scientific consensus can be tied to truth. As my book shows, that cases where the scientific consensus is really solid, followed by the development of instruments to be able to witness and see the thing or process in question, the scientific consensus has proven to be correct.
There are many other examples. Now there are microscopes that can reveal the behavior of viruses, and we can see the virus do things we already know.
We can also use a microscope to look at the structure of all kinds of molecules, and again, if there is a strong scientific consensus on the structure (eg hexagonal benzene ring), we believe that the consensus is correct. The same thing happens when we talk about DNA double helix structure.
These cases demonstrate that a strong international scientific consensus can be trusted as a form of truth telling. It also includes cases where we have not yet developed (and probably never will develop) the technology to allow us to observe what we cannot currently observe.
What about the concern that, in the past, the scientific community reached a strong consensus on an idea that has now been vigorously debunked?
I have found that, throughout the history of science, when the following two specific criteria have been met, the claim in question is not refuted, it is only strengthened.
First, at least 95% of relevant scientists are willing to express support for the claim in a clear and without objection or limitation. If asked, they are also willing to call it an “irrefutable scientific fact.”
Second, the relevant scientific community is large, international, and incorporates a substantial diversity of scientific perspectives (as in climate science).
These criteria are only met when there is a substantial amount of first-degree scientific evidence for the claim in question. This criterion serves as the best proxy we have for the impossible alternative, which is to analyze all the scientific evidence ourselves, spanning decades, from a plethora of different perspectives. In practice, these two simple rules can help us identify science that is timeless.
Zalfa Imani Trijatna from the University of Indonesia translated this article from English.
