Throughout the annals of human existence, there has persisted an enduring manifestation of what can only be presumed to be a universal trait intrinsic to our species: an insatiable curiosity. With this trait, humans have sought out various methods of gleaning knowledge from the world in an attempt to gain understanding and insight about nature and their place in it. The beginning of the journey towards an understanding of nature was fraught with epistemologies that oftentimes failed to reliably lead to truth. In the earliest human civilizations, the enterprise that is presently known as science was in practice a conglomeration of methods, ideas and systems that, in retrospect, had merit in some aspects, such as the astronomy, medicine, and engineering evident in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. However, despite the myriad of successes these civilizations witnessed, they also failed to accurately explain phenomena or used methods of explanation that have simply proven to be unreliable. As a result of the mixed successes, many of the unreliable methods of inquiry and understanding likely failed to reach a point of extinction as they occasionally would be accurate by coincidence, further enhancing a confirmation bias implicit in the framework. How, then, may we judge these civilizations’ methods as “incorrect”—or rather, what methods do we have presently that allow us to authoritatively declare certain ideas as “false?” In this essay, a presentation of modern scientific methods and their triumphs will follow, providing insight into this very question.

To begin, a philosophical discussion must first be established to explain the foundational underpinnings of the various positions held over time on the subject of truth and knowledge. Firstly, a definition of truth and knowledge is crucial. Truth will hereby be defined as correspondence that comports with reality, as posited by the 20th-century philosophers Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore, and knowledge will be defined simply as justified true belief.¹ One of the first major epistemological philosophies was Aristotelianism, which governed scientific thinking for nearly 2,000 years and was based on the notion that different philosophies were essentially equivalent in their application to different areas of explanation. For instance, natural philosophy, which was what would now be considered science, was seen as an equivalent facet of inquiry to metaphysics. In fact, this conflation of philosophies led to explanations about reality that, although motivated by experiential evidence, lacked explanatory power and served as mere conjecture at best and unfalsifiable assertions at worst, such as the psuche or essence posited by Aristotle that subsists within an animal and is the source of its organization.² Essentially, Aristotle’s philosophy was unbounded, lacking a strict methodology, and thus was part of a relativistic form of explanation that was subject to change over time. Different ideologies and cultural precepts could inform the interpretations of data gleaned from the natural world. Furthermore, how, then, could those interpretations be “objectively” false? Their falsehood ultimately results from their inability to accurately describe past, current, or future states of reality.

With the initiation of the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, much of the explanatory relativism began to diminish as a new standard was set for science. A particularly defining moment was the publication of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687; Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), which solved many of the problems regarding mechanics and cosmology. Principally among this work was its method of scientific explanation that related physical observations to general patterns that could be formally expressed mathematically and tested by experiment. An example of this would be Newton’s universal law of gravitation, which was informed by the question: ‘if objects fall to the earth, is the moon also “falling” towards the earth?’. By considering observations that led him to his three laws of motion and deducing from previous observations, such as those by Johannes Kepler, he was able to formulate an expression relating the gravitational forces between objects, which could be experimentally verified. A general train of thought for his derivation is shown below:

This law of gravitation could then be experimentally verified, and later experiments further confirmed his formulation, with the gravitational constant successfully calculated in 1798 by Henry Cavendish with the use of a torsion balance.³ The most important aspect of this form of explanation is that it does not invoke any deeper explanation than can be deduced from first principles and observation. Throughout this period of revolution, there remained some remnants of a relativistic paradigm that are present in René Descartes’s conception of the general program of science. He began with the premise that all natural phenomena could be described by matter and motion, a program called mechanical philosophy. To this end, he was engaging in deducing natural phenomena from a metaphysical principle. He argued that space extends infinitely, and since empty space is—by definition—nothing, then space would be an infinite extension of nothing. This would then suggest that the only real things that can extend in space are material.⁴ From this conclusion, he reasoned that no piece of matter could influence another through empty space; instead, forces must interact through a material or ether. Though his hypothesis is testable and falsifiable, he was not seeking ways to falsify it, rather he was treating it as an axiom and then attempting to develop a full theory of mechanics. Based on these ideas, Descartes would have seen Newton’s law of gravitation as problematic because Newton did not provide a mechanism but only proposed what could be observed. He described his new concept of discovery with a postscript in Principia: “I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for these properties of gravity, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. … It is enough that gravity really exists and acts according to the laws that we have set forth and is sufficient to explain all the motions of the heavenly bodies and of our sea.” This idea of “shallow explanation” is something that distinguishes modern science from the others; in the past the idea was to give a reason for the behavior of the world that spanned a depth of understanding that was impossible to glean from the current data, while modern science only postulates immediate causal principles from observation and whatever can be logically deduced from those principles.⁵ Descartes’s philosophy represents a sort of hybrid between modern science and the Greek methods as he seeks a mechanism and proposes a hypothesis but fails to test it, opting to imply theory from metaphysics.

Rising from the ashes of the war of ideas during the Scientific Revolution, science emerged as a distinct branch of inquiry that, to this day, governs understanding about nature. Throughout the time since the scientific revolution, numerous advances have been made using the scientific method, allowing humans to reach levels of power and ability that could only be conceived as god-like only a few centuries ago. What, then, makes modern scientific explanation so superior? As was previously mentioned, a shallow conception of explanation derived from observation became the basis for gaining truth about nature, but how was the concept of explanation universally accepted? Chiefly, when scientists posit an explanation, they mean they are “proposing a model, which is a simplified representation of the natural world, designed to make statements that align with empirical measurements.”³ What makes a model more valuable than just a compilation of data is its ability to identify patterns within the data, which allows it to predict future observations. For instance, consider this sequence of numbers: 2, 3, 6, 11, 18. A model that describes the data could be an = n2+2 because it captures the pattern inherent in the sequence. If more data is collected and, we say, for example, the next number is found to be 19, the model could be said to inaccurately explain the pattern—but if the pattern picks up with the next numbers being 38 and 51, the 19 may seem to be more like an outlier to the general pattern. If a model adds assumptions to preserve its accuracy, it may be warranted if it improves the predictive power, but in other cases, it may just be overfitting. Take, for example, the suggestion that the model is made more complicated to include the 19: aₙ = n² + 2; for n = 5k, k∈Z, aₙ = aₙ₋₁ + 1. This addition suggests that, at every fifth number, the pattern switches. Which model is better? Well, in such cases, statistical methods may be employed to justify keeping a certain model to test the significance of deviations, and more data is always better to determine which is superior. However, in the limiting case, you could posit a new rule after each number saying that the pattern is n + 2 then n + 1 then n + 3 and so on, but in that case, your model does not explain anything; it’s more complicated than simply collecting the data and has no predictive power. Furthermore, a model need not be entirely quantitative to be scientific, as is illustrated by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. His model explains the diversity of life by suggesting a mechanism for change within species, which is testable and makes predictions about genetics, biogeography, and paleontology, among others. If a model makes many assumptions to explain few observations, and there is a simpler explanation at hand, then the model should be tentatively rejected in favor of the simpler model in accordance with Occam’s razor.⁶ Pseudoscientific theories fail in this respect. Creationism, for example, simply posits that all of the diversity of life was created from the beginning as is and, therefore, does not explain anything. The flat earth model has to make many assumptions to account for conflicting observations, not to mention its utter failure to stand up to rigorous scientific experimentation that consistently falsifies it. Ultimately, as was stated elegantly by a YouTube creator in a debate of this very topic, “if a model makes testable, potentially falsifiable predictions with parsimonious explanatory power, then it is worth your consideration. If all a model has, however, is ad hoc speculation that incorporates selective data-mining and unfalsifiable remedies to fundamental problems, then you are likely dealing with pseudoscience.”⁷

Several reactions to modern science have emerged since its inception, including transcendentalism and postmodernism. Transcendentalism had a basis in Kantian philosophy and implied that there was knowledge which could be known sans experience. Transcendentalists insisted that man had a divine connection to nature and that humans had the capability to understand nature intuitively in contrast to empirical notions put forth by thinkers like John Locke.⁸ This notion may appeal to romantics, but truth may not reliably be achieved through introspection, and this is a claim that has been ironically demonstrated empirically and inferred to be prima facie evidence via induction to be valid. Additionally, Postmodernism is to be considered. The Encyclopædia Britannica provides a descriptive list of the tenets of postmodernism, but two points in particular must be addressed:⁹

The first point made by postmodernists suggests that there is no objective reality, which may lead to the conclusion that reality is relative. Based purely on semantics, this assertion could be argued to have merit if one is to assume that each person’s experience of the world is slightly different than anyone else’s or that the senses are limited and, as such, provide a biased view of what reality really is. In this sense, reality could be argued to be relative, but by no means does this negate the assertion that there truly exists an objective reality that simply exists outside of experience. By observing nature with our senses and even with instruments unbiased to sensory illusions, scientists have demonstrated that there really are facts about reality that transcend conceptual constructs, artifacts of the scientific practice, or language as suggested by postmodernists. Consider someone standing on an overlook at the edge of a sheer cliff face. Would that person be embracing a “naive realism” by accepting the established scientific fact that gravity would have an effect on them if they jumped? So far as it may be discerned, it seems much more naive to suggest that reality is relative in this way, as if a mere social institution, belief, or concept could prevent the immutable laws of physics from wrenching the limp body of a relativist from the atmosphere and to the hard ground, and what for them may be a hard truth. The second point made by postmodern philosophy is related to the first assertion in that the postmodernist claims that there is no way to definitively explain a proposition as either true or false. This assertion hearkens back to the suggestion that explanations about natural phenomena are relative and that they do not possess any objective truth value. Again, claiming that there is no truth stems from the belief that there is no reality, but assuming that some form of a relative reality is accepted by such proponents, they must still contend with the logical incoherence of the assertion. By stating that an explanation, being a logical proposition, cannot be true or false, the postmodernists are essentially violating the law of the excluded middle by stating that a proposition, A, or the negative of that proposition, ᆨA, cannot be true or false. Furthermore, even if the laws of logic are to be ignored in favor of a new system of logic, the postmodernists still come across the issue of how they are to reconcile a relativistic reality with propositions about that reality which may be empirically demonstrated to either comport or not with that relative reality. In such a manner, the postmodernist must face the idea that even in a relativistic reality there exist propositions that either comport with that reality or not and thus have a “relative” truth value. Besides this absurd notion, methods of science have indeed demonstrated facts about the universe that are not open to interpretation. The entire enterprise of postmodernism fails to recognize that science, with its meticulous processes and relentless pursuit of truth, has consistently demonstrated the existence and behavior of phenomena in the natural world. The laws of physics, the principles of chemistry, and the mechanisms of biology operate with unwavering consistency, regardless of individual or collective perceptions. The solidity of a rock, the boiling point of water, the orbit of the planets—these are not subject to personal interpretation but are empirical truths observable and measurable by anyone, irrespective of their subjective viewpoints. The utter reluctance to acknowledge this reality does not diminish its existence. To deny the objective nature of the world is to disregard centuries of scientific progress and to indulge in a solipsistic fantasy that collapses under the weight of evidence and reason. Therefore, I urge freethinkers to abandon this misguided relativism and embrace the incontrovertible reality that science so compellingly affirms. It is science, after all, which has been a candle in the dark cave of ignorance, gradually lighting our way towards progress and understanding of the universe. Remain Curious.