# Can or does science accurately describe our reality? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 16, 2010, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966 "2010-07-16T21:46:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/41 "2010-07-17T14:54:31Z")
My response to that is that if there is something we cannot directly perceive, then we can find it through its reactions with things that we can perceive. And if it doesn’t react with things we can perceive, then there’s no point in looking for it, because something that can’t be sensed or affect sensible things might as well not exist. ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/42 "2010-07-17T15:13:23Z")
I think you are correct from a practical standpoint. But if we are hoping science fully and accurately describes reality, we would still be lacking. That unidentifiable thing still exists; its existence is just immaterial to ours. ---
**Author:** ![SyuRi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@SyuRi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SyuRi)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/43 "2010-07-17T15:19:05Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > We know it describes phenomena because it makes accurate predictions. Well but we’re not sure about predictions. We can’t know with 100% certainty that tomorrow gravity will still be here, though we base our work as if it will, and our predictions are based on that assumption. > [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Knowing “what things are” isn’t as important as knowing “what things do”. We have no way of knowing what things really are. But we can know a great deal about what things actually do. > > Science tells us what things do, not what things are. So my friend is right in saying science doesn’t give us knowledge about what our universe really is. Just to work with it, like the mans in the caves can work with their shadow in the Allegory of the cave, but never knowing what’s outside of it. Just as you can describe how a computer works by taking 8 different buckets and saying an empty bucket is 0 and a full bucket is 1 does not mean that this is the way the computer is. It is merely a description of how the computer works. > [@Marley23](#): > > Science starts from the assumption that things are knowable. If you don’t make that assumption, you can’t apply reasoning and there would be no point in trying to describe things scientifically. It also makes the assumption that things happen for a reason, although maybe that’s a way of restating that first assumption. If things happen for no reason, then we can’t find out why they happened, and again there would be no point in examining them that way. Beyond that, scientific theories are always provisional and can be modified or abandoned as new evidence is discovered. Do we know for a _fact_ that things are knowable? I admit I’ve never thought about it, but I doubt there is any way to prove it. The best we could do, I think, is to say that scientific descriptions of some phenomena are very accurate and that their accuracy is a strong indication that some things are knowable. So as far as that goes, I’d say science can describe some elements of reality. But there are a lot of ways to describe reality and the physical laws of the universe are not the only way to do it. Science also has the assumption that the world is real, and that there are laws that rule the universe which don’t change with place or time, that the rules of logic are valid, that mathematical language can be descriptive of the physical world. My question is, since science accepts these assumptions on faith, how can it say that it knows the real world? > [@Cisco](#): > > Science is the best way for our culture to describe reality right now. I don’t know if we can say it can describe reality. The reality that we are aware of makes sense for science, but we can’t know if we’re just studying shadows, right? For instance, before it was discovered the earth was round, it made sense that it was flat. People would look far away, and that’s how it would seem. It’d probably hard for them to prove or notice otherwise. Same could be happening to us in other areas of science perhaps… We can’t behave as romans laughing because someone suddenly challenge our concepts of the solar system and says the sun is the one at the center. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/44 "2010-07-17T15:19:39Z")
But if it is completely immaterial, it is _not_ part of our reality. For something to exist, it pretty much has to be tangible or affect things that are tangible. ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/45 "2010-07-17T15:46:50Z")
I guess I am confused as to the definition of reality. If reality is that what we can perceive, then you are correct. My assumption was reality was objective and outside of our prejudices. Cells existed before we knew about them. Atoms did too. My position is that we will continue on this path of discovery in the future, which means there are things we cannot perceive and describe as of now. And since we will continue to find new things that were not part of our reality, I believe there are things that we are unable to find because we are not so lucky to have every measurement device possible. What is inside of a black hole? Perhaps the scientifically literate can help, but it is my understanding that we are unable to perceive anything past the event horizon. Does that mean nothing can exist there because even if something does, it does not affect anything tangible on the outside? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/46 "2010-07-17T16:26:17Z")
The Op’s friend and those with similar attitude need to read Asimov’s _The Relativity of Wrong_. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/47 "2010-07-17T16:32:47Z")
> [@SyuRi](#): > > I am in a discussion with a friend about this theme. He basically says science cannot describe reality until it proves the assumptions from which it bases all its theories and knowledge. > > Is he right? Of course not. This doesn’t mean that science cannot describe reality; it means that you cannot **prove** that science describes reality—which is a very different thing. But, for the most part, people accept that science does describe reality, because it seems to work. Where the controversy lies is whether science is the **only** way of describing reality, or whether there are aspects of reality that lie outside the reach of science. I don’t think we logically can insist that **everything** that is real or true can be scientifically described or proven, because that statement itself is outside the ability of science to prove. Or to put it another way, how could we know whether “science” and “reality” match up perfectly without having some way, other than science, of knowing what reality is? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/48 "2010-07-17T16:34:07Z")
> [@SyuRi](#): > > So my friend is right in saying science doesn’t give us knowledge about what our universe really is. Yes, but be wary. That line of argumentation is usually followed by “… so I can believe whatever ridiculous nonsense I want to and science can’t prove me wrong!” The fact that we don’t know what the universe really IS, doesn’t mean we can’t know what it ISN’T. The Moon isn’t made of ice cream, and unicorns aren’t real, and homeopathic remedies are still just tap water. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/49 "2010-07-17T16:44:15Z")
> [@kingbighair](#): > > I think you are correct from a practical standpoint. But if we are hoping science fully and accurately describes reality, we would still be lacking. That unidentifiable thing still exists; its existence is just immaterial to ours. Well, sure. But so what? Is it your position that religion can describe such things? ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/50 "2010-07-17T17:03:55Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > I understand that the brick wall is in a sense hollow and made up of electromagnetic forces. But still this brick wall is for all purposes inpenetrateable. Is this not reality? This is more a question of familiarity and scale. “Solid” or “impenetrable” objects or surfaces as we encounter them in daily life are only “impenetrable” _because_ of electromagnetic forces. So, the only reason a cup won’t fall through a table is because the electromagnetic forces keep the two objects apart - the “particles” (atomic nuclei) in a substance are so small in relation to their distance to each other that they’re just not “touching” at all; even if you touch a wall, all you’re really feeling are the electromagnetic forces. Which is also mostly what keeps you (and most other objects) in one piece. > [@](#): > > Is this philosophical masturbation or what do we mean by these kind of of questionings? Well, _I_ think it’s interesting. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/51 "2010-07-17T17:13:12Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The Op’s friend and those with similar attitude need to read Asimov’s _The Relativity of Wrong_. Good suggestion. [Here it is](http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm). It’s a short read. ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/52 "2010-07-17T17:24:13Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Well, sure. But so what? Is it your position that religion can describe such things? Hell no. I find little use for religion. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/53 "2010-07-17T17:26:01Z")
I think there’s a point here that people are missing. We’re using the wrong word. Science models reality. It doesn’t describe it, it approximates it, to a finer and finer degree. As we experiment, we learn that reality acts in such and such a way, we make notes, and we enhance our models that way. What the Op’s friend is doing, is insisting we work from the bottom up, not the top down. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/54 "2010-07-17T18:24:07Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > Good suggestion. [Here it is](http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm). It’s a short read. If creationists, anthropomorphic global warming deniers and many other anti-science folks had read and understood that, we could had saved hundreds of years worth of explanations. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/55 "2010-07-17T21:28:44Z")
> [@SyuRi](#): > > I don’t know if we can say it can describe reality. The reality that we are aware of makes sense for science, but we can’t know if we’re just studying shadows, right? For instance, before it was discovered the earth was round, it made sense that it was flat. People would look far away, and that’s how it would seem. It’d probably hard for them to prove or notice otherwise. Same could be happening to us in other areas of science perhaps… We can’t behave as romans laughing because someone suddenly challenge our concepts of the solar system and says the sun is the one at the center. Well, that’s not far from where I was going with the modifiers _our culture_ and _right now_. Contrary to whatever Der Trihs is babbling on about, reality exists within a context. The reality of a frog is not the reality of a tiger. Our context is society and culture. Among our goals as a society and culture now are exploration, communications, convenience technology, transportation, etc; science works very well in this context and thus does a good job of describing our reality. The distance from Betelgeuse to Arcturus, or the speed of an electronic impulse across a serial bus means precisely nothing to an island tribesman, and thus would not do a very good job of describing his reality. Hunter-gatherer legends and traditional rites of adulthood and marriage, however, suit him very well. A description of objective reality, apart from being virtually useless and probably impossible to achieve, is limited by the nearsighted phenomenon of everybody thinking their version of reality is objective. Even taking Asimov’s Relativity of Wrong into account (great essay, by the way), if you don’t think our version of “reality” is in for radical revisions and new discoveries, you’re not paying attention to the past, or asking the right questions about the present and future. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/56 "2010-07-17T21:52:18Z")
> [@SyuRi](#): > > I am in a discussion with a friend about this theme. He basically says science cannot describe reality until it proves the assumptions from which it bases all its theories and knowledge. > > Is he right? No. Firstly, assumptions are not proven. If they were, they wouldn’t be assumptions. Second, anything can describe reality. What your subject stresses is whether it can _accurately_ describe reality. But this supposes (uh-oh, assumptions!) that there is some standard by which we can say a description is, is not, or has some degree of accuracy. What does science mean by accuracy? Usually: the degree of conformity of predictions to experience. What are your friend’s criteria? If he states them, then the question will practically answer itself. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/57 "2010-07-17T21:56:03Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > Science is the best way for our culture to describe reality right now. Just like the Judeo-Christian religions were the best way to describe reality to certain cultures at one point, the Olympic gods were the best way to describe reality to another culture at one point, and so on. Please explain how the Judeo-Christian religions have described reality, in a useful fashion, in any point in history, in a way superior to competing alternatives. Please also give at least one example. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/58 "2010-07-17T22:27:19Z")
Not **Cisco** but I will give it a go. The salient features of reality to various henotheistic tribes that became “the Hebrews” were mostly agricultural, social, and political ones. The alternatives were a variety of extant local belief systems that loosely worked together, some with a variety of different rules and sacrificial systems. Judaism united these tribes with a shared mythology and a common set of laws; the myths provided the basis for a common identity and purpose, and provided the basis for a set of laws that made social and political life more predictable - “if I do A, B will happen reproducibly”, that there is a “degree of conformity of predictions to experience”, has been established as the least poor test of useful concurrence of a belief with reality and that belief system passed that standard for those salient features of reality. It provided agricultural guidelines and a means for providing for each other as part of social obligations; also better than many other alternatives available at that time. And the stories, oh the stories … they gave great fodder for understanding human nature, the human condition, the complexity of real people who are neither all hero or all villain, and much much more. Much more so, IMHO, than most competing alternatives available to those peoples at the time. Was it a method for discovering germ theory? No. But it did provide rules for isolation of those with what observations had told them close contact would lead to contagion. Did it uncover that the earth is not flat and that it revolves about the sun? No. But it did observe enough to come up with a good enough calender to guide planting and harvesting. Reality is infinite (we believe) - our understanding becomes focused on the parts most salient to our needs of the time and what we have the tools to perceive. For that time’s needs it did a decent job. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/59 "2010-07-17T23:28:28Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > Well, that’s not far from where I was going with the modifiers _our culture_ and _right now_. Contrary to whatever Der Trihs is babbling on about, reality exists within a context. The reality of a frog is not the reality of a tiger. Our context is society and culture. Nonsense. Reality doesn’t exist “within a context”; reality IS the context. Reality is the same for everything. Subjective perception is not reality. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2010, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966/60 "2010-07-18T00:34:35Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > The reality of a frog is not the reality of a tiger. And yet both negotiate reality in the same way. Their sensory perceptions are used to construct neurological models that are capable of predicting how reality will unfold in the future. For the frog its model may be optimized to predict the trajectories of flies, and for the tiger its model may be optimized to predict the bounding of gazelles, but from an epistemological perspective, both are proceeding in the same manner. Science is merely the systematization of this natural epistemic process: Make observations, construct models, and then make further observations to confirm the predictive value of the model. We humans live in a model of reality that is optimized to serve the survival needs of a small pack of hunter-gatherers on the African plain. However, by being very systematic about our observations and inductions we can extend our model to encompass a much wider variety of ways that the universe can unfold. This is why its unlikely that science will ever be replaced by “something better”. Observation and induction are so inexorably intertwined with what it means to “know something” that its hard to imagine how “knowing” can exist independent of them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-or-does-science-accurately-describe-our-reality/546966.md?page=4)