I’ve been pondering the idea of scientific proof. This post is due mostly because of an interesting discussion I had at work, but scientific proof, knowledge and method has been something I’ve been researching off and on for the past few months. Scientific proof, when in the heads of non-scientists, seems to mean something that most scientists would not entirely agree with.

When we are confronted with a requirement to offer scientific proof of a particular assertion this typically means we must provide some form of evidence (observation, prediction and experiments) that establishes with certitude our view of nature. Here is where, I think, we fall off the tracks. Certitude, unfortunately, is not what a scientist seeks to establish. He seeks to provide a possible and, through experimentation *and* interpretation, probable explanation for the objects in the natural world. Rarely, if ever, do scientists make the bold statements that they possess certainty with respect to their views about nature.

We as non-scientists, toss this back and forth between one another when we are confronted with ideas in nature that we find unappealing. What’s worse is when we attempt to require scientific proof for non-material objects or concepts. Most times we use this as kind of a “Ha! If you can’t demonstrate your ideas scientifically they must be rejected.” I must admit, it works quite well. But when we naively toss out this requirement we fail to realize that within the scientific reasoning process tools such as logic, deduction, induction and interpretation are a common staple. These are the very tools that allow us to reason about all sorts of metaphysical objects. For some reason, we silently (ignorantly or implicictly) allow these tools to be used by the scientist, but do not allow them to be used to establish the possibility of metaphysical truths. This may have something to do with the concept of certainty being so tightly coupled with the idea of scientific proof.

We cannot realistically make use of logic to reason about the natural world and at the same time restrict this class of reasoning when speaking about other objects. Science makes use of premises that lead to conclusions that must be true if the premises are true. So, we either have to reconsider what we mean by scientific proof or allow for the possibility that this reasoning process is available to non-scientists to derive non-certain, but possible and probable knowledge about the world. To this end, this is more or less an introduction to what will, hopefully, be my take on scientific epistemology. I think it is important to understand what scientific knowledge is, how this knowledge is obtained and how it relates to reality.