• Question: In science is there truth or is truth unobtainable?

    Asked by skellington to Darren, Deuan, Duncan, Lori-An, Michelle on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Michelle Hudson-Shore

      Michelle Hudson-Shore answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      I think you can never say with absolute certainty that something is true as there is always the possibilty that a ‘black swan’ will come along and show that it isn’t true. That is it only takes one black swan to show that all swans aren’t white and this can be the case in science it can only take one finding to show that something isn’t right. Even with the theories that become accepted as ‘truth’ there is usally aspects tthat we can still ask questions about so I think science is always striving for the truth but maybe will never quite reach it. But that’s what makes it so fascinating.

    • Photo: Deuan Jones

      Deuan Jones answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      For me the point of science is to discover something true – if truth was always unobtainable there would be no point. Like if gravity existing on earth was true one day but on other random days wasn’t then you couldn’t study it (and we’d all be floating in space). There are some things we’ll never know, but I think there’s plenty of things we can know to deal with!

    • Photo: Darren Nesbeth

      Darren Nesbeth answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      An interesting philosophical question.

      I’d say, given the nature of subjective consciousness, truth is unobtainable.

      But we can have a pretty good idea about what things tend to happen 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time and what things never happen.

    • Photo: Lori-An Etherington

      Lori-An Etherington answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think truth is unobtainable but the theories in many areas of science are based on the available evidence and can therefore change based on new findings

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