Is Science the Best Way to Know?

by May 14, 2017Epistemology, Worldview

Not long ago, popular YouTube science guy Derek Muller of Veritasium put out a video detailing the myriad ways in which scientific studies go wrong. He titled it, “Is Most Published Research Wrong?”

He ends with these words (click here to skip to this portion of the video):

What gets me is the thought that even trying our best to figure out what’s true, using our most sophisticated and rigorous mathematical tools, peer review, and standards of practice we still get it wrong so often. So how frequently do we delude ourselves when we’re not using the scientific method? As flawed as our science may be, it is far and away more reliable than any other way of knowing that we have.

I’m actually not a science skeptic. I have to have pretty compelling reasons to disbelieve a given Western scientific consensus. The Words of the Living God in Genesis 1–11 provide one compelling reason to doubt one reigning consensus. But I’m not against science as such. I’m for it. I think the scientific method is an incredibly useful tool for discovering truth God reveals through the observable cosmos.

What gets me is scientism: the faith people place in science. “As flawed as our science may be, it is far and away more reliable than any other way of knowing”? How can we know that? Science can’t prove that science is the best way to know. I’m far from the first to make this point; I simply found it interesting to see such faith at the end of a video in which Muller shows how flawed science can be.

For a much fuller discussion of the themes in this post, check out Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption. I wrote unit 7 on science, and I roundly praise the created good in science, explore the ways the fall twists it, and show that Christ can and will restore his rule over it.

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