Belief that Science is the One True Path?

Humans are good at devising different approaches to the same problem, even problems as big as The Acquisition Of Knowledge. Science is one strategy for acquiring knowledge but not the only one. You can also gain knowledge via

• observation (direct or via a proxy)
• intuition
• introspection (of your mind, or your current knowledge, of your language)
• by consulting lore or other authorities
• through trial and error
• by the application of an algorithm, or
• through revelation (though I would argue this is by turns either a special case of intuition or is not knowledge acquisition)

The scientific method is formed of a selection of the best of the above.

Teachers see this all the time. Challenge a group of 8 year olds to add 45 and 36 in their heads and then ask each how they did it. Some add 40 and 30, then 5, then 6. Some add 30 to 45, then add 6. Some take 5 from 36 and add it to 45 to get a nice round 50, then add the remaining 31. Some add 5 to 45 and 4 to 36, then subtract the 9 from the 90. It's mathematically provable that there are an infinite number of strategies like this ("add one million and seven to each number, then subtract two million and fourteen afterwards" etc.), although children tend to settle on one of half a dozen or so that are manageable. Modern teaching practice encourages children to develop facility in their chosen strategy (years ago, one "best" strategy would be enforced by the teacher) and, crucially, to be aware of the other strategies. Then, as harder challenges are posed, strategies that worked previously may be shown not be up to the task; others can be brought to bear. Finally, teachers will provide a sure-fire algorithm where one is available; in additive mathematics this is the summing of columnally arranged numbers with carrying-over. You shouldn't need to write out the sum 45+36 in columns and add the units, carry the 1, and then add the tens plus the carried number. To do that, you probably use one of the parting and summing and redistributing strategies about. But you will probably need columns for 6,934,442+84,909.

The scientific method is a strategy like long division or columnal addition. You can try and figure out what makes the tides happen or why people die via observation, intuition, reading the Bible, asking an eye-witness, praying for the answer and so on. You might even get the right answer. But when all your approximate or imperfect methods of knowledge acquisition fail, or if you aren't convinced of the answer you get, the scientific method is there. It might not be appropriate for every problem, it might be a disproportionate effort to apply, it might be harder to get the answer than you thought, it might even seem rather boring to do it this way…but it will get you there. This is the crucial difference. As Richard Dawkins has pointed out, regardless of the perceived value of other ways of understanding the world, only one method gains converts by repeatedly proving itself superior to the others and that one method is also prepared to admit it is wrong. No other system of knowledge acquisition or even culture does that. For transparency and reliability, look to science.

The method of science is not appropriate to all situations. When playing Battleship, the scientific method is no better than trial and error. When making moral assessments, introspection and intuition always come to the fore. If you require irrational or superrational explanations of the universe in all its glory then introspection and the consulting of lore are most likely to satisfy your doxastic appetite. Science is only a successful strategy for certain questions, but these questions are more numerous and more important than many people fond of other methods might care to admit.

What is the value of knowledge acquired without science?

Science is an enabler in all cultures, societies and brains. A particular result of an experiment may not however be welcome in a particular culture, given society, or individual brain. The question cultural relativists (and many of those who take a middling position) then try to ask is, In what way can we indicate the value of indigenous perceptions that are not in agreement with scientific results? That is an interesting question but, frankly, it is a distraction. If your knowledge base tells you that tides are due to the sea responding to turtle nesting, or that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, or that the sprinkling of lights some call the Milky Way is the ejaculate of a paternalistic deity, you are welcome to argue the value of your knowledge and to recruit as many relativists to your cause as you can. But you are delusional if you think that your knowledge has all the characteristics that scientific knowledge has.

This is the crux. You are free to choose the method by which you interpret the world and free to reject the results of any particular method (how could it be otherwise? how can I force you to forget the turtles and go for the moon?). But, underneath it all, it really is actually true (for all practical values of true) that the moon causes tides, that the Earth is billions of years old, and that the Milky Way is a bogglingly vast collection of unimaginably hot balls of burning gas many trillions of miles away. You and your relativist cronies are on a hiding to nothing.

It is also true that I have no interest in providing you with self-esteem just because you feel you deserve it, or because yours was a culture rendered two-dimensional by the steamroller of European expansionism, or because your parents told you about the turtles when you were small and impressionable. It isn't the turtles, dammit! However comforting your traditional knowledge may be, however valuable it is to you, do not bank on it lasting because, I must tell you, it is rubbing up against reality and will eventually abrade away. Science, for these particular journeys, is the better path, the best we have to date. Other journeys are valid, but take you elsewhere.