I think it was David Hume who had an interesting insight on faith. Basically faith is essential for everyone, because even before you are capable of knowing anything you must first have faith that it is possible to know things. While I do recognize that many religious people have got a lot of things backwards themselves, perhaps the most important issue at hand is that religion recognizes that it isn’t actually possible to know everything about existence (you can know OF God, but you can’t know ALL of God).
I like to think of science as conservation of faith, an attempt to explain as much as possible while having faith in as few initial postulates as possible.
That’s not faith. That’s just pragmatism. A set of models which predict the observed world with the fewest number of theories will be the most easily understood and the most easily extended. However seeking simplicity does not mean that there is a simple answer.
I’m not refering to faith in the religious sense just faith in the sense of believing something that cannot be proven, in the case of science this is purely pragmatic such as faith that our senses provide a useably accurate picture of reality and that every other person isn’t lying to us. It is however still a form of faith.
I, a curious person and budding scientist, want to understand more of the world I observe. I make a starting assumption, that it’s possible to create a usefully predictive model.
I dream up a model, then I create a set of hypotheses to test the predictions of my model. If my predictions match my observations I say that I have created a useful model. Although you hear people talk about theories being proven, if you peel back what’s actually happening it’s just creating models. If over the course of all my efforts I never create a useful predictive model I may have disproved my starting assumption that modeling is possible. But we have ample evidence that it is.
Here’s an example of a model we know to be untrue (or more correctly incomplete) but which we still use: Newtonian Mechanics. NASA does not need to involve Relativity to send a probe to Mars and have it get there as planned. Because the space-time in which the probe operates is simple enough that Newtonian math is sufficient. But we also have a better model: General Relativity. We have not thrown out Newtonian because its still a useful model provided you know it’s limits. Newtonian assumes absolute time and Galilean Invariance. Both models assume the gravitational constant G doesn’t change. When/if they find evidence of that we’ll need new models.
The idea that the universe, or every other person is not lying to us as you said, is not faith. Just another assumption.
There’s no faith here. Just a process. The critical difference between this process and faith is that it MUST be constantly tested and discarded if it does not work.
I think it was David Hume who had an interesting insight on faith. Basically faith is essential for everyone, because even before you are capable of knowing anything you must first have faith that it is possible to know things. While I do recognize that many religious people have got a lot of things backwards themselves, perhaps the most important issue at hand is that religion recognizes that it isn’t actually possible to know everything about existence (you can know OF God, but you can’t know ALL of God).
That’s a bit more charitable than I’m willing to be, but thank you for the comment.
I like to think of science as conservation of faith, an attempt to explain as much as possible while having faith in as few initial postulates as possible.
That’s not faith. That’s just pragmatism. A set of models which predict the observed world with the fewest number of theories will be the most easily understood and the most easily extended. However seeking simplicity does not mean that there is a simple answer.
I’m not refering to faith in the religious sense just faith in the sense of believing something that cannot be proven, in the case of science this is purely pragmatic such as faith that our senses provide a useably accurate picture of reality and that every other person isn’t lying to us. It is however still a form of faith.
I, a curious person and budding scientist, want to understand more of the world I observe. I make a starting assumption, that it’s possible to create a usefully predictive model.
I dream up a model, then I create a set of hypotheses to test the predictions of my model. If my predictions match my observations I say that I have created a useful model. Although you hear people talk about theories being proven, if you peel back what’s actually happening it’s just creating models. If over the course of all my efforts I never create a useful predictive model I may have disproved my starting assumption that modeling is possible. But we have ample evidence that it is.
Here’s an example of a model we know to be untrue (or more correctly incomplete) but which we still use: Newtonian Mechanics. NASA does not need to involve Relativity to send a probe to Mars and have it get there as planned. Because the space-time in which the probe operates is simple enough that Newtonian math is sufficient. But we also have a better model: General Relativity. We have not thrown out Newtonian because its still a useful model provided you know it’s limits. Newtonian assumes absolute time and Galilean Invariance. Both models assume the gravitational constant G doesn’t change. When/if they find evidence of that we’ll need new models.
The idea that the universe, or every other person is not lying to us as you said, is not faith. Just another assumption.
There’s no faith here. Just a process. The critical difference between this process and faith is that it MUST be constantly tested and discarded if it does not work.
I never bought into presuppositionalism. You can act like you know something with zero confidence or even the ability to know what confidence is.
A plant knows how to grow to light.
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