Why Science is Great, but not Truth

The Bohr Model of the Atom

Chemistry is as hard of a science as it gets (When I say hard, I don’t mean difficult ) but almost everything that is taught in a basic chemistry class is not true, and the professor knows it.  A great example of something that is not true but is taught anyways is the Bohr model of the atom.  The Bohr model of the atom is where you draw electrons in circles around the nucleus of an atom.  It’s a completely fallacious way of looking at an atom, but it still works for what the teacher may want to get across.  An even better example is drawing Lewis structures of molecules to determine what a molecule might look like.  There are many cases where Lewis structures don’t show what is actually happening, but they work great most of the time.  Lewis structures although not universally true, are still an integral part of understanding organic chemistry.   

The Lewis Structure of Water

Physics is an even better example.  When a professor teaches Newton’s laws he knows that they are not universally true. Einstein himself famously proclaimed that Newton was wrong.  But then why do we still teach Newton’s laws?  Because they still work pretty well most of the time, even if we know they are not factual.  Interestingly our two best current physical theories are Einstein’s relativity theory and quantum mechanics, but they contradict each other and hence cannot both be true.  The main problem is that relativity views space as flat, lazy, and predictable while quantum mechanics views the world as chaotic and unpredictable.  Mostly, scientists ignore the differences and use relativity on large scales (planets, solar system, galaxies) and use quantum mechanics on small scales (electrons, protons, quarks, etc.). They also still use Newton’s laws in many midscale cases even though we know they are not universally true.  This is also why many modern physicists are searching for a grand new theory that is most commonly referred as ‘string theory’ which could harmonize these contradicting theories.

So even though we know that all these theories cannot be universally true, they are still great theories that help us do amazing things like develop cell phones, laptops, and cars.  We even know how to safely travel to the moon and back because of these theories (and that was 40 years ago).  That does not mean that our theories are true, it just means they work really well.  For example, we used to think the sun revolved around the earth and we could even make great predictions about when the sun would rise and the path it would take across the sky.  We had good evidence to support our theories and our theory helped us make good predictions.  But just because their evidence supported the idea that the sun revolved around the earth, it did not make that theory true.  (Copernicus even made a similar mistake by assuming that the sun was the center of the universe rather than just center of the solar system). The beauty of science is that as we get more data we construct better theories that fit the data better; to be clear though, this does not make our current theories true.

This gets me to biology. Unlike chemists or physicists who realize the boundaries of their theories, biologists demand that everyone say their theory is 100% fact. Biologists do have a great theory that explains the observed evidence very well.  The main theory of biology is evolution and there is good evidence that supports it.  That does not mean that evolution is true.  The evidence of evolution is good but our explanation for that evidence is human and flawed.  One day we will look back at our current understanding of evolution and biology and marvel at our ignorance.

When I took a philosophy of science class at the University of Wyoming my professor told me that every scientific theory we have ever had has been proven false.  He was implying that every scientific theory we currently have will also be proven false.  That does not mean we are going to decide that gravity does not exist or that evolution did not occur but it does imply that our current understanding of evolution is flawed, along with physics and chemistry.  We should celebrate when old theories are replaced by new and better ones, and most people do.  The problem is that many people think that criticizing evolution is tantamount to criticizing all knowledge. To illustrate, I have a friend that has said the phrase “evolution is false” should be banned and is not worthy of first amendment protection. We should all recognize the marvels that science has brought to us but also realize that as a species we are still quite ignorant of how the universe really works.