The greatest flaw in relation to science

I'm going to stick my neck out, which is the point of this post.

I'm convinced that the very act of conviction in something when everybody else thinks you're crazy is what keeps things evolving in terms of civil progress. I think, therefore, that the greatest human flaw is order. I reckon that the very nature of science, for example, that something must be asserted as wrong until it is accepted as proven is the most fundamentally flawed thing there is.

However, I think it the best tool we have also. This is because most of the time most things that are way off the scale can be tested to be wrong. However, sometimes they are right, and this is why, in my opinion, science needs mostly people who do not obey to the conduct of its method. Order in a person, the person who reduces risk, the follower of logic is the most unfruitful of people in all senses.

You're right in principle, I wonder how right this is in proportion to what it is that's being proposed in practice. Behind the lines of the semantics of disproving and proving, there remains an issue of faith, which scientific method doesn't really acknowledge.

My point is this:

The proof is in the pudding but often the things 'tasted' are in the ingredients and so its hard to find the evidence and therefore the proof.

I'll leave this, which is what Socrates supposedly claimed, for you to think on:

'Well, then, he said, my conviction is that the earth is a round body in the center of the heavens, and therefore has no need of air or any similar force as a support, but is kept there and hindered from falling or inclining any way by the equability of the surrounding heaven and by her own equipoise. For that which, being in equipoise, is in the center of that which is equably diffused, will not incline any way in any degree, but will always remain in the same state and not deviate. And this is my first notion.'

You may wish to consider this a rhetorical question:

If you had the choice would you eliminate world hunger or explore Mars?

Good. This relates to practicality. The utility of science is about perspective of what's important. You may find the question absurd. Sadly, one day it may not be so absurd-especially in the next century.

Hey Decius, I was reading these posts and I was thinking, oh my God I agree with Decius which for some reason amused me. Actually I agree with both of you, but Decius is right about disproving current theories. Theories are right untill they are disproven with up to date evidence. However Decius I found myself giggling at your responses to heyjme1's questions about what you thought were more important scientifically to explore. You seemed to struggle to find an answer and resulted in insulting him by calling him a retard. lol.

Its a perfectly valid question. Lets assume things got so bad on the Earth that there just was not enough food available for the world,(which lets face it is getting pretty close to it now). What do you do? do you concentrate scientific efforts on creating more food on Earth, or do you explore the notion that out there in the universe, lets say Mars for arguments sake, is a planet that could be terraformed to produce farming land and ultimately another Earth and solve all our problems?

With regards my original post-I'd like to expand because recent science is in fact creating a problem for conventional scientific method. String theory, for example, creates hypothetical regions of spacetime; that is it assumes something that cannot in principle be tested. This is what I mean by the ingredients, as opposed to the pudding above. Now I don't realy like string theory as a run towards truth. But that's not the point. The problem is that a great deal of scientists are refuting it because conventionally theories lay assumptions that can actually be tested and they give predictive power.

If something is hypothetically introduced; sometimes it cannot be tested. This does not mean, however, as a significant number of scientists would have it, that it is not true-or precisely that this kind of thing is un-scientific. It could well be a bad theory but it could also be that the subject needs further development. The point is, really, that its the minds that come up with these things that progress science.

I don't think there is anything wrong with hypothetical untestible theories. science-fiction is creating them all the time (I have a few of my own in unpublished sci-fi novels)! Many a good science-fiction theory has prompted real scientists to start looking at new equations and sparked interesting new inventive technologies - look at Star Trek that's a classic!

"I reckon that the very nature of science, for example, that something must be asserted as wrong until it is accepted as proven is the most fundamentally flawed thing there is."

Scientists arrive at conclusions through a series of tests. They rely on simple observation to make assertions toward truth or fact when it comes to these tests. Over time it becomes easier to accept something as a truth if you witness the same outcome time and time again, but it's really up to each individual to decide whether the test is reliable, reasonable, able to stand on its own ect ect.

I reckon there are scientists out there who perform thousands of tests with an identical outcome who would still be willing to say that it is possible for a different one to occur.