Ichthyic
Posts: 3325
Joined: May 2006
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| Quote | | Science looks for patterns, but that doesn't mean every single individual or event follows that pattern (and perhaps none of them do--for example, no one has 2.5 kids), and the pattern changes depending upon which aspect of a phenomenon one chooses to measure. Yes, scientists are interested in what is true, but "truth" is multi-valent. |
I always found the simple discussion of the flipping of a coin to be illustrative.
Is there "truth" in the statement that if you flip a coin, it has an equal chance to land heads or tails?
Say you flip a coin 12 times:
you could run a trial where it lands heads 10 tens and tails 2.
another where it lands tail 8 and heads 4.
and another where it lands exactly 6 and 6.
the scientist takes these trials, and constructs a probability around them, that shows that with sufficient replication, better than 95% of the time the average will be 50/50.
Is it "true" that a coin flip will always have an equal chance of landing heads or tails? Well, brief experience might say otherwise (any given trial), but it is significantly likely that this will be so over the long haul, and hence we base rational decisions on that likelihood.
If someone doesn't understand what probability means, or what an average means, then they could easily conclude based on any given trial, that it simply isn't "true" that a coin has an equal chance of landing heads or tails.
For what it's worth, that's how the difference between "truth" and pragmatism was first explained to me, anyway.
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"And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
-CC
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