I was reading Statesmen by Plato. Right at the beginning, they used a method of division to classify various entities (in this case, different types of knowledge). Seeing this, I thought of something very interesting about people who say they “only believe in what is scientifically proven”:
Generally, these people don’t really know what they are talking about. When someone says this, they are implying that all knowledge they consider true must go through the scientific method, which involves the following steps: (1) observation, (2) questioning, (3) hypothesis generation, (4) experimentation, (5) obtaining results, (6) conclusion.
Given this, there are four problems with acquiring knowledge only through this method:
1. The first is the fact that many basic pieces of knowledge don’t fit this level, especially because of step 4, experimentation:
When have we ever conducted an experiment to prove that we are our parents’ children? We can do a DNA test, but we have to trust that a technician performed the test correctly.
When I hear that the new car I bought has passed tests to ensure it works well, do I go to the factory to verify it? If I do, how can I guarantee that the car I see being tested is the one I will buy? I would need to follow the entire manufacturing process, piece by piece – and I would need knowledge in mechanics, chemistry, electronics, and other areas to understand what is being done. The act of buying a car would take decades.
Therefore, it is clear that there are several other aspects we must consider when acquiring knowledge: common sense, reason, faith, etc.
2. Scientific knowledge is a few hundred years old, but before that, we already had techniques for planting and harvesting, building roads, forging metals, navigating, writing, and reading, etc. In other words, there is a vast amount of knowledge that existed before the scientific method.
To claim that everything we can know must come from science, we would have to deny any knowledge generated before the 16th century when Francis Bacon invented the method. This is completely insane: it would be denying that people before were incapable of knowing anything.
Before the scientific method, we had to use other methods, such as observation, dialectics, and others.
3. The scientific method was created through reason, that is, through a method prior to it. How could we, then, use the scientific method to prove itself?
I can’t use the scientific method to prove itself. It would be like saying that the story of The Lord of the Rings is true because the books say it is.
4. Even within scientific fields, we have knowledge generated through other methodologies. Let’s take biology, which is part of what we call the “natural sciences”: not all knowledge generated by it comes from the scientific method.
In biology, one of the most important topics, which is the classification of beings, comes from observation. Indeed, it may be that to differentiate certain species of protozoa or very specific beings, we have used experimentation. But what about differentiating a dog from a cat? And a pigeon from a hawk? And a bird from a mammal? Observation is enough.
Of course, there are cases where there is greater initial difficulty, such as the classification of bats or dolphins, but just observing the way of life of these animals in more detail, we can distinguish which classification they belong to.
In other words: there is no experimentation in the generation of this knowledge. And since the scientific method presupposes experimentation, it is not used to generate these concepts.
Indeed, it is possible to argue that nowadays we have access to genetics to make these classifications, and genetics allows a series of experiments. However, the classification of beings already existed before this field developed.