And lo On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:52:27 +0200, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake thusly:

> Warp wrote:
>>   Maybe you could argue that science makes the *assumption* that  
>> measurements
>> correspond to reality, but as long as there's no evidence of the  
>> contrary,
>> there's no reason to think otherwise. Someone could argue this *is*  
>> faith.
>
> I think what makes it faith is the behavior in the face of  
> contradictions to what one has faith in.
>
> The behavior when showing a religious person things that tend to  
> contradict their faith is generally denial and looking for some way to  
> show you've misinterpreted their holy works or some such. The classic  
> example is if you show someone where the bible says God is evil, they  
> will tell you that you're misinterpreting the bible.
>
> If you tell a scientist that you have measurements that don't match  
> theory, the first assumption is that you measured incorrectly. The  
> second assumption is that the theory is wrong. I don't think there's  
> ever an assumption that reality is conspiring against you.

And the third option is that something unknown is influencing the results.  
If the theory matches the majority of results than the unknown influence  
becomes the most logical thing to check for.

Said influence may well turn out to be that reality is conspiring against  
you; although it's more likely to labeled "unknown" and only speculated  
about.

Now of course if reality is just conspiring against you such that only  
that one set of results should 'error' the only way to show it was if  
every result was different. If they're not it has no reason to be factored  
in.

The ball bounces, does it matter if it's red, blue or green? The Sun moves  
in the sky in a fixed pattern, does it matter if it's being pushed along  
by an invisible scarab? Science only gets involved if the answer is yes;  
faith gets involved even if the answer is no ;-)

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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