Is science the fundamental source of knowledge?

[Petros Agapetos]

Now this is how I know you can't think of your own. Instead of actually answering what I said, which is completely without fault and exposes how laughably stupid your scientistic view of the world, you start talking about completely different things. You can't, as you have shown repeatedly, defend your views, because you understand them only as edicts and have no understanding further than what is necessary to regurgitate this nonsense.

There are two points here that you have to answer. One, that to argue that any position requires evidence contradicts itself. Two, that to argue that the naturalistic, therefore scientific, worldview is the only valid one is to assume naturalism. Moreover, the scientific method can't prove itself using the scientific method, meaning that the scientistic worldview rests on a huge contradiction.

We are talking at a kindergarten level of philosophy and even then you can't keep up with the pace of it. I would argue that there isn't so much a philosophical position and worldview to be dealt with here as it is an ignorance and incapability of philosophical thinking.

You are accusing science of epistemic "circularity" with presuppositional apologetics, fallacies, and ad hominem attacks.

Science does contain philosophical underpinnings which are unprovable, which thus require "faith" in the epistemological sense. However, science distinguishes itself from purely faith-based beliefs in the same way that philosophy does; by the application of logic. Science also goes one step further by adhering to demonstrable, repeatable experiments and empirical data.

Most respected scientific papers, which introduce new concepts into widespread discussion, are peer-reviewed. Peer review is the process by which scientists in the relevant field are tasked with judging the study detailed in the paper for soundness of experimental design, data analysis, and conclusions. A critical requirement for a paper to pass peer-review is that the study must be described such that it can be replicated easily by a scientist wishing to subject the conclusions to another test. In this way, other scientists can either repeat or challenge the work that produced controversial findings. There is nothing comparable to this in religious faith.

Religious beliefs generally are maintained solely on the basis of faith.Faith is not a means to seek knowledge, it has not been demonstrated to reveal truths about the world. Scientific inquiry reveals many more truths about the world than the faith of any believer. Faith is unreasonable conviction that is defended from all reason, that is assumed independent of evidence.

As for, whether science uses circular logic, you cannot know whether your reasoning is valid without reasoning either. Does that mean that reasoning is not justified? Learning to write with a pen requires picking it up and using it. If this is the extent or nature of circularity that you are pointing out in science, then I'll admit that science is circular.

Also, your apologetics style reminds me of this

[Oneeye]

That is all nice, but it does not explain someone's taste in music. Maybe to a point, but it is more complicated than that and it also includes social factors, mindset of an individual and personality, this and that.

Of course people have individual tastes. But overall: the wavelengths of combined notes and the relativity of successive notes can have the amount of discordance measured. The less discordant, the more "pleasant". That some people prefer less harmony is irrelevant.

[Oneeye]

I have to correct you. I argue against the philosophical underpinnings of science. Science is not any of the things you have mentioned so far. The argument from etymology is ridiculous because it's simply a name given to an institution and worldview, that which we call science, but it isn't exactly knowledge in itself just because it is Latin for knowledge. Then a question: how do you know which results are true and which are not?

Results that are repeatable are true.. they are constant. We KNOW what the outcome will be when we repeat a peer reviewed scientific experiment multiple times. How can certainty be any higher?

[Petros Agapetos]

The reliable performance of so many of our modern technological conveniences depends on the repeatability of scientific findings. For example, modern telecommunications technologies, which use the exchange of "packets" of encoded information over a multitude of media from wireless technology to fiber optics, is able to relay complex information thousands of miles around the world in a way that can be decoded by a recipient within seconds. The rapid delivery and high fidelity of such data are not dependent upon faith but upon repeatable phenomena discovered and manipulated using a rigorous, evidence-based approach. Is a cell phone powered by faith? Of course not!

[MissMischief]

Well, science is a better and more consistent way to obtain knowledge than many other methods available to us. There are other ways to obtain knowledge and understanding but, in comparison to the scientific method, they are inefficient processes and cannot be relied on to provide correct facts and explanations. They may provide correct facts and explanations, but they commonly do/or have not. Obtaining correct facts and arriving at correct explanations by anything other than the scientific method occurs fortuitously, by chance, or accident, rather than purpose. What is more the explanation arrived at, if it is a correct one, will not be known to be the correct one, nor will there be any understanding of why it is the correct one.

[Herr Abubu]

You are accusing science of epistemic "circularity" with presuppositional apologetics, fallacies, and ad hominem attacks.

I'm not accusing it of circularity, I'm accusing it of contradiction. Insults are just insults. You are ignorant, no doubt, but I am not arguing that you are wrong because of your ignorance or some other unpleasant attribute. It's not fallacious to insult someone. Neither is it wrong to do it when the insults are right, which certainly is the case. As for fallacies, there are none on my side.

Science does contain philosophical underpinnings which are unprovable, which thus require "faith" in the epistemological sense. However, science distinguishes itself from purely faith-based beliefs in the same way that philosophy does; by the application of logic. Science also goes one step further by adhering to demonstrable, repeatable experiments and empirical data.

Your way of argumentation is really specious. The philosophical assumptions of science are contradictory, not only unprovable. This is what I have pointed out so far. To argue for science as the fundamental source of all knowledge, which is the scientistic position, is to contradict oneself because there's no way of knowing this a posteriori, one makes an a priori argument, exactly what science denies exists.

Most respected scientific papers, which introduce new concepts into widespread discussion, are peer-reviewed. Peer review is the process by which scientists in the relevant field are tasked with judging the study detailed in the paper for soundness of experimental design, data analysis, and conclusions. A critical requirement for a paper to pass peer-review is that the study must be described such that it can be replicated easily by a scientist wishing to subject the conclusions to another test. In this way, other scientists can either repeat or challenge the work that produced controversial findings. There is nothing comparable to this in religious faith.

Peer-review is a completely laughable practice. The scientific institutions are completely corrupt because humans are corrupt, especially in the day and age of scientism.

You cannot know whether your reasoning is valid without reasoning either. Does that mean that reasoning is not justified? Learning to write with a pen requires picking it up and using it. If this is the extent or nature of circularity that you are pointing out in science, then I'll admit that science is circular.

I'm very glad you point this out, but you fail to see what aspect of it is important. If reason is inherently circular, it means it couldn't be justified. It would mean reason is contrary to reason, which doesn't work. This means something very important. Amud touched upon it earlier. Godel, although it was known long before Godel, realized this. What he concluded, and he was right in doing so, is that there would have to be something fundamental, something transcendental. That something is along the lines of what Plato and Christians thought. If Platonism isn't true, all of our thought is arbitrary. Nihilists like Max Stirner and Nietzsche were far more sincere in some ways than people like you, though in your own way you follow the nihilistic logic far better than they did. If nihilism is true (which is what your world view leads to), which is also contradictory in a sense, there is only the Will to Power.

[Herr Abubu]

Results that are repeatable are true.. they are constant. We KNOW what the outcome will be when we repeat a peer reviewed scientific experiment multiple times. How can certainty be any higher?

No, they aren't constant. Hume, an empiricist, pointed out that we could never know anything for certain through induction. We always have to assume that what happened before is going to happen again, but we never know.

[Petros Agapetos]

Science is based on faith is a statement that reflects a straw man or equivocation fallacy propagated by apologists to attempt to discredit "belief" in science as being no more sound than belief in God.

Science does contain philosophical underpinnings which are unprovable, which thus require "faith" in the epistemological sense. However, science distinguishes itself from purely faith-based beliefs in the same way that philosophy does; by the application of logic. Science also goes one step further by adhering to demonstrable, repeatable experiments and empirical data. Science is the systematic approach to acquiring knowledge about how the world works using the scientific method — that is, generating hypotheses and theories through observation and testing. Science is intimately linked with technology; technology is developed using scientific discoveries and science is reliant on technology to further its ideas. The goals of science are to learn more about the world and satisfy our natural curiosity and possibly use this knowledge for the betterment of humankind, or for the destruction of humankind, whichever comes first. But note that practical applications is not always the primary motivation for scientific research, hence the phrase "pure science" as opposed to "applied science".

[Petros Agapetos]

Science has been the most spectacularly successful method humankind has invented for the investigation of the material world. As has been mentioned previously, technology and technological advancement is reliant on science. The fact that we have been able to use the knowledge provided by science for a certain practical application is indicative of its success. Scientists and engineers have produced drugs that cure diseases, vaccines that prevent them in the first place, the cultivation, distribution and storage of an enormous variety of food, communications and transportation methods that allow us to make contact with others across the world with ease, and computers that have vastly increased our ability to collect, store and analyze information. Less obvious examples are things like ballpoint pens, insulated houses, flushing toilets and the materials and dyes used in modern clothing. By its nature science seeks to form cohesive explanatory frameworks for any information, without clearly drawn limits; this makes it pesky and irritating to those who would prefer that science would just stop at some arbitrary point so they can comfortably maintain anti-science beliefs and practices.

[Oneeye]

No, they aren't constant. Hume, an empiricist, pointed out that we could never know anything for certain through induction. We always have to assume that what happened before is going to happen again, but we never know.

OK, I know that in the past experiences, letting go of an 8-ball will send it straight down towards the earth. Presuming that I am still well within the gravitational pull of the earth, I can assume.. but not know.. that if I let go of one over someone's head that it will go straight down and probably hit them.

Most people are not using the term "knowledge" correctly, then. Other people will accuse me of knowingly hitting someone with an 8-ball. I'll let those motherfuckers know that I assumed that it would, but that I didn't know.