Science and Knowledge

So what does all this mean? It means that science does not presently, and probably never can, give statements of absolute eternal truth - it only provides theories. We know that those theories will probably be refined in the future, and some of them may even be discarded in favor of theories that make more sense in light of data generated by future scientists. However, our present theories are our best available explanations of the world. They explain, and have been tested against, a vast amount of information.

Consider some of the information against which we've tested our theories:

·  We've examined the DNA, cells, tissues, organs, and bodies of thousands if not millions of species of organisms, from bacteria to cacti to great blue whales, at scales from electron microscopy to global ecology.

·  We've examined the physical behaviour of particles ranging in size from quarks to stars and at times scales from femtoseconds to millions of years.

·  We've characterized the 90 or so chemical elements that occur naturally on earth and several more that we've synthesized.

·  We've poked at nearly every rock on the earth's surface and drilled as much as six miles into the earth to recover and examine more.

·  We've used seismology to study the earth's internal structure, both detecting shallow faults and examining the behavior of the planet's core.

·  We've studied the earth's oceans with dredges, bottles, buoys, boats, drillships, submersibles, and satellites.

·  We've monitored and sampled Earth's atmosphere at a global scale on a minute-by-minute basis.

·  We've scanned outer space with telescopes employing radiation ranging in wavelength from infrared to X-rays, and we've sent probes to examine both our sun and the distant planets of our solar system.

·  We've personally explored the surface of our moon and brought back rocks from there, and we've sampled a huge number of meteorites to learn more about matter from beyond our planet.
     We will do more in the centuries to come, but we've already assembled a vast array of information on which to build the theories that are our present scientific understanding of the universe.

     This leaves people with a choice today. One option is to accept, perhaps with some skepticism, the scientific (and only theoretical) understanding of the natural world, which is derived from all the observations and measurements described above. The other option, or perhaps an other option, is to accept traditional understandings³ of the natural world developed centuries or even millenia ago by people who, regardless how wise or well-meaning, had only sharp eyes and fertile imaginations as their best tools.

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