Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

Science deals mainly in synthetic truth, that is, truth based on observation. It piles up large amounts of empirical evidence in order to draw conclusions about the real world. So, for instance, the rising of the sun in the East every day is observed so a conclusion is reached that it will rise in the East again tomorrow. But despite the huge amount of empirical evidence for the sun rising in the East, it is still possible that it won't happen. Likewise, all scientific ‘facts’ are at best only statements about what will probably happen or continue to happen. Science will wait, perhaps for centuries, for new thoughts to arise and new evidence to come in. But there is always the possibility that things will turn out to be different from the current theories.

Science uses inductive reasoning. It attempts to correspond its truth to the external world, but it must base its logic on induction rather than deduction. In this way its theories are only contingently true. To justify using induction, it could be said that it has been shown to work numerous times, therefore it must be true. But this argument uses induction to prove induction.

Science puts together theories about the world, which are supposed to be ‘falsifiable’ — thus, could be proven wrong. Once a theory is established, then attempts may be made to knock it down. In coming up with theories though, there is a certain amount of rationalism involved — a certain amount of deduction rather than deduction. So the scientific endeavour is often divided between the empirical and rationalist approaches. The method can be summarised as follows:

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