Science is a method for investigating the physical world around us. Two concepts lie in the heart of science: Observations and Theories.

Observations are data that can be received from the outside world through our senses or recorded through instruments whose operation principles are clear.

Theories are what binds the observations together in a meaningful fashion.

“Science,” Henri Poincaré had noted, “is made of facts like houses are made of bricks, but a pile of brick does not constitute a house.”

Theories turn the piles of facts and observations into useful models of the real world, which are the goal of science.

Personally, I think that science is great. It is a consistent method of improving our understanding of the world around us, including our bodies, our minds and our relationships. Granted, Humanity’s use of science is strongly reminiscent of a child playing with matches, but the solution, I think, is to have the child grow up, not to ban matches.

It is important however to understand the limitations of science. The most important of those is the dependence of scientific knowledge on data coming in from the senses (including data from instruments which eventually reaches us through the senses). René Descartes showed us that logically all information coming in from the senses is in doubt. Then he made a valiant attempt to found the actual existence of the physical world in logic. He only succeeded in proving that the subjective onlooker has to have an actual existence (a principle he neatly summarized as “cogito ergo sum”). His attempt to establish the actuality of the sense data depends on the existence of a Judeo-Christian God, and his proof of the existence of such deity is laughable.

So there you have it: if you are going to believe that science has some kind of truth to it, you have to make a leap of faith. There is nothing guaranteeing that the data we receive through our senses has anything to do with what really is.

It is also important to distinguish between science and mathematics. While science makes extensive use of mathematical tools, its primary emphasis is on consistency with outside data, whereas math only deals with internal consistency, and is not in any way obliged to actual truth. So while math (and logic) are in some ways ‘more true’ than science, as they don’t rely on the possibly false data from the fallible senses, it is also ‘less true’ because it has no presumption to describe any actuality.

We must not make the mistake of claiming science to be the absolute truth. It is simply the best method we have found to make consistent advances in our state of control of the world. That is a lot in itself.

As an expert on leaps of faith, I believe that the world around exists independently, and that science is the best way to approximate the truth of it, and that it obeys mathematical models because math captures an essential ingredient of the way things must be. But none of these statements can be proven any more than the existence of an omnipresent divine consciousness.

To conclude: my goal in this blog is to construct a system of faith-oriented thinking based on the aforementioned axioms and using logical deductions, while conforming to any scientific knowledge available.