Re: SSM Plebiscite
Reply #538 –
It's interesting how followers of a dogma accuse science of being dogmatic, it seems impossible for many to separate their need for belief from scientific observation.
There is a general societal failure to understand the meaning of hypothesis and theory in a scientific context. Claiming that a scientific hypothesis or theory is about faith or belief is an error made from a dogmatic perspective, hypothesis built on faith would be examples of pseudoscience unproven or proven to be untestable or unmeasurable.
In science a hypothesis only becomes theory when the probability of it being true is very high, always after measurement and testing.
In dogma and in general society theory is widely misused, an idea which would more correctly be described as a claim without supporting evidence is frequently labeled a theory. It requires some faith or belief.
Science is not a belief system, belief has no part of science, and confidence in a scientific hypothesis is not about faith. An assertion can be made in science(Asking a question), choosing the assertion is not faith or belief base, because by default you must then test all cases supporting and counter to your assertion. In science an hypothesis is nothing more than a starting point, a starting point that may be based on some previous evidence but not necessarily, and a valid result in science can be either negative and positive.
If it is not measurable, testable and repeatable then it is not science, it is then a matter of faith. Phenomena that cannot be measured and tested has a high probability of not being real.
New Age has a horrendous history of misappropriation of terms like science, hypothesis and proof because many ideas proselytized are deliberately fashioned to be impossible to prove or disprove. By definition you might claim you cannot prove a negative result, in this regard those New Age ideas are nothing more than philosophical toys. Language gymnastics, not real science. We conduct this debate here in English, in other languages the terms might not even exists in which we can frame some of these pseudoscience issues, yet science's hypothesis, measurement and testing spans any language, the scientific method is not dependent on belief, faith, perspective or language.