Science and the truth

In addition to ‘Stats and the truth’…

I had a great teacher for physics at my secondairy school. Apart from the fact he was a total nutjob, he had some great thoughts about different subjects ranging from religions to photocamera tripods. Some where just discardable but some where very interesting. Such as his thought about science.

In science, you are only making guesses. Estimations. You never quite know if what you have is the truth. For instance, you can count all ferns in the world and realise they’re all green, but you’re never certain. Never. You could never say “All ferns are green.”, because one purple fern, one miserable purple fern would destroy that theory.

This applies to basicly everything. You can’t even know if the fridgelight is switched off when you close the door!

This even goes well with the quote: “Conclusions happen when you get tired of thinking.”