Can Science Prove Anything?
By Andrew Zimmerman Jones

What does it mean to prove a scientific theory? What's the role of mathematics in science? How do you define the scientific method? A recent e-mail conversation with a reader brings up some great questions about the fundamental way people look at science.
The Conversation Begins
Several days ago, I received an e-mail which seemed to criticize my support of the big bang theory which is, after all, unprovable. The author of the e-mail indicated that he thought this was tied into the fact that in my Introduction to the Scientific Method article, I have the following line:
Analyze the data - use proper mathematical analysis to see if the results of the experiment support or refute the hypothesis.
He implied that placing an emphasis on "mathematical analysis" was misleading. He claimed that mathematics was tacked on later, by theoreticians believed that science could be better explained using equations and arbitrarily assigned constants. According to the writer, mathematics can be manipulated to get the results desired, based on the scientist's preconceptions, such as what Einstein did with the cosmological constant.
There are a lot of great points in this explanation, and several which I feel are far wide of the mark. Let's consider them point by point over the next few days.
Point 1: Unprovable
This is an excellent point. The big bang theory is absolutely unprovable. In fact, all scientific theories are unprovable, but the big bang does suffer from this a bit more than most.
When I say that all scientific theories are unprovable, I'm referencing the ideas of famed philosopher of science Karl Popper, who is well known for discussing the idea that a scientific idea must be falsifiable. In other words, there has to be some way (in principle, if not in actual practice) that you could have an outcome which contradicts a scientific idea.
Any idea which can be constantly shifted around so that any sort of evidence would fit it is, by Popper's definition, not a scientific idea. (This is why the concept of God, for example, is not scientific. Those who believe in God use pretty much everything to support their claim and cannot come up with evidence -- at least short of dying and finding that nothing's happened, which unfortunately yields little in the way of empirical data in this world -- which could, even in theory, refute their claim.)
One consequence of Popper's work with falsifiability is the understanding that you never really prove a theory. What scientists do is instead come up with implications of the theory, make hypotheses based on those implications, and then try to prove that specific hypothesis true or false through either experiment or careful observation. If the experiment or observation matches the prediction of the hypothesis, the scientist has gained support for the hypothesis (and therefore the underlying theory), but has not proven it. It's always possible that there's another explanation for the result.
However, if the prediction is proven false, then the theory might have serious flaws. Not necessarily, of course, because there are three potential stages that could contain the flaw:
· the experimental set-up
· the reasoning that led to the hypothesis
· the underlying theory itself
Evidence which contradicts the prediction may just be a result of an error in running the experiment, or it could mean that the theory is sound, but the way the scientist (or even scientists in general) interpreted it has some flaws. And, of course, it's possible that the underlying theory is just flat out wrong.
So let me state categorically that the big bang theory is completely unprovable ... but it is consistent, by and large, with everything else we know about the universe. There are still many mysteries, but very few scientists believe that they will be answered without some variation of the big bang in the distant past.

 

When you know what I know and I know that I teach what I've been taught and I've been taught that you don't get something for nothing, you don't get freedom for free, you won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes no matter what your dream might be.

 

I see we have a Thread conserning Evolution.....
........ I thought I'd drag this one back into focus ......

I try to get people to think out-side the box.

 

I like the quote of: `yesterday's science fiction is today's science fact'.
Falsifiable? Yes, as a good man of science, i try to debunk some theories, even though sometimes I wish, or even believe that they are true, or probably are.

This is good to remember, for the first one, a correlation study of cause and effect can have inherent flaws, at its foundation. This can often occur with a small sampling size, or not enough discriminants to form real "multiple discriminant analysis" or MDA.

 

There will always be things that remain at the theory level, like the Big Bang. We can't go back in time and witness how the universe began. I suppose the closest we could come is if we witnessed the birth of a new solar system, but even then, I don't know if it would become the Big Bang Law. They tend to save laws for those things that are indisputable, like gravity. After all, if there is no gravity then the Earth sucks.

 

science can't prove everything.This is fact!!!Try to question about religion,anyone has its faith,and doesn't depend on science

 

I'm more interested in what science disproves. That may be the thing about science that scares those of faith the most.

 

You'll be waiting a long time for science to disprove God.

 

And what do those that believe in god bring to the table?
Can they explain how a DVD player works?...How GPS works?
How a mobile phone operates?.....How a computer can do millions of caulcations a second?
All Science at heart is mathmatics of the observed effects.
Yes the big bang theory is just a theory and will not be provable anytime soon.
But i would not say that it could never be proven.

You see what you take as right or wrong if just a function of your programmed ego.
If you were told something was not possibale for a long time and you came to believe it.
Then even when you were shown that it can be done....you would doubt it
Say it was`nt true.....call it blasphemy...Say that it is wrong.
Just because it goes against what you think of as RIGHT.

What is true to you ...Is only true from your perspective.
It is not what is REALLY TRUE.
It is not universal law.....it is just how you have interpreted the information you had...at that time.

Yes the scientific method is slighty flawed.
But less so then religion (if your being honest)
And is the best tool we have at this time to explain how things work.

It is sick and twisted that science and religion were devorced in the 1600.
Science has never tried to disprove God.

In fact Quantum theory is not that far away from proving that God exists!
And no he is not an old man on a big cloud...And shock horror!
God is not a "he"...but before all the ladies jump for joy.
God is not a "she" either.
Because God has no form that we can understand. so why do you assume that God would be one sex or the other.

Im sorry to say....That what you have been taught in schools and in your religion.....
Is wrong.
Look at the origin of your religion.
God loves all his creations...........Yet woman are subjucated to men.
Now why would that be?....could it be that men were writing the book...and maybe changed a few words?

People of strong religious believes point at science and call it a house of cards.
Without looking at there own house first!....but they have faith.
And believe that faith carrys meaning with God.

God is truth....not faith.

 

Not if you consider disproving the bible as disproving God...many do.

 

Here again, the problem is with some people's misconceptions about what a "theory" is, in scientific parlance. It's easy to dismiss scientific theories, if you're of a mind to do so, because science doesn't generally deal in absolute 100% certainty. But we constantly rely on the correctness of scientific theories in our daily lives. We do that because they're right.

It's "only" a theory that airplanes can fly...and yet, we trust our lives to it, secure in the knowledge, the CERTAINTY, that airplanes really can fly. We know they can because we see them do it all the time. We even know WHY they can, HOW they can. If an airplane crashes, we see it for what it is...that something went tragically wrong. We don't see it as proof that airplanes can't fly. We see it as something for which there must be and is a reasonable explanation. By that I mean, it was not a random act of God.

 

How does a bean sprout know which way is up?

If you turn a sprouted bean, it will always turn towards the open air. It's not light, because they do it in the dark. It's not heat, because they do it when the temperature of the soil and air are the same.

 

Do you seriously doubt that there's a scientific explanation for the phenomenon?

 

We called it gravity, the last time I checked.

 

Of course not, I was only wondering what it was.

Last time I checked, gravity was eliminated. They put them in a centrifuge and they still grew "up".

However, I do not remember what the finding were when they tried it in space.

Do you?

Science has figured out most of the questions about nature, but each time some people don't have personal knowledge of the scietific explanation, they call it a mysticism.

 

This looks like a job for Bill Nye the Science Guy.

 

Science is not 100 % proveable like mathematics is. Scientists propose theories aboout how they think nature works from scientific experiments. Note, I said "how", not "why". The "why" part is a philisophical question that science can't answer. If the theory works with all the experiments that are developed, over time, then, eventually, scientists reach a consensus that the theory is likely correct. There are scientists that will come along later and try to challenge the most widely accepted theory, but, it's up to them to find a hole in the existing theory and convince the rest of the community that they have a better theory that describes the experimental discrepancies.

 

the best part is reality doesn't give a fuck about what humans believe or don't believe.

 

Of course, unless and until that consensus is reached it doesn't get granted the status of "theory" to begin with. It's merely a hypothesis up to then.

 

I didn't read the post... but yes. Science proves a shit load of shit.