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Quantum Truth?

by Nicholas Barnard on July 27th, 2003

The Quantum Physics book as caused me to being to doubt scientific truth.

Here is the problem: Science is a pursuit performed by people making a hypothesis and then creating an experiment to test it. (or vice versa, starting with an experiment then coming up with an explanatory hypothesis.) The problem arises in that we can never prove a hypothesis true, only falsify a hypothesis. So since people are constructing the theory and the experiments the hypothesis and/or theory are rooted in the history of that science and the experience of people performing the experimenting and hypothesizing. A danger in this is the possibility that there is a false case floating around waiting to be recognized as such.

While of course a false case is a danger to the theory being falsified, it is also potentially detrimental to theories that have been structured as a result of knowledge gained or theory developed on the falsified theory.

This of course calls into question the whole nature of science. Is there some case that can destroy the fundamental nature of science? Perhaps one of the core precepts that all science is based on is false? What then?

The possible flaw in my reasoning of course is eventually after an unfalsified theory is used and explored so many times does it become truth? When does it cross this line?

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