On Fri, 20 May 2005 15:09:36 -0500, Kim Borgman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I can use a thermometer, or some other instrument, to get temperature
> and scientifically prove that water freezes at 32 degrees.

And just what is 32 degrees?  How is it measured?  What are the
empirical tests by which the scale is established to our
satisfaction?  How are the instruments to be used constructed and
calibrated?  What are their degrees of precision?  What are their
margins of error?  How do you establish that the thing being tested
is really water and not an aqueous solution of something else?  What
is water? How do you establish that it is not actually deuterium
oxide or tritium oxide, or a mixture of oxides comprising all of the
isotopes of hydrogen?  How does one measure the temperature at the
actual change of state and not later?  What environmental factors
must one control for?

Does not the original statement in fact rest entirely on faith in
things beyond ones own knowledge and often beyond ones means to
establish with certainty?  This is proof?

Science is not looking at a gauge, it is understanding the unbroken
links between what one observes and how it is understood.  It is
weighing the probabilities that the evidence one possesses supports
those links in the specific circumstances that one encounters and the
degree of trust one possesses that others have previously established
the reliability those links and the evidence that supports them to
the highest degree of assurance as can be had.

Science is not certain, it simply eschews whimsy.  Mysticism, on the
other hand, rests entirely upon the whims of the believers.  Faith,
however, permeates both systems.

--

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