There is
much that science doesn’t understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a
Universe tens of billions of light years across and some ten or fifteen billion
years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on
surprises. Yet some New Age and religious writers assert that scientists
believe that “what they find is all there is.” Scientists may reject mystic
revelations for which there is no evidence except somebody’s say-so, but they
hardly believe their knowledge of Nature to be complete.
Science is
far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It’s just the best we have. In this
respect, as in many others, it’s like democracy. Science by itself cannot
advocate courses of human action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible
consequences of alternative courses of action.
The
scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is
central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they
don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative
hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a
delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however
heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything new ideas and
established wisdom. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a
democracy in an age of change.
