• Question: Do you ever stop and wonder, what if everything science has discovered isn't true?

    Asked by Teddy and Anna to Giuditta, Flavia, Craig on 17 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Flavia de Almeida Dias

      Flavia de Almeida Dias answered on 17 Nov 2015:


      This question has a two parts answer:

      o Science never has theories which are absolutely true – we have theories which work inside the experimental conditions we test things. And most theories are only part of a big picture – and can be replaced by a theory which explains the same plus more things, or can be valid up to a certain point, and then replaced by something else. Let’s take as an example classical mechanics (as formulated by Isaac Newton). We know that classical mechanics works well to describe a lot of things in our daily life – like the roller coaster problem (that the first part of it needs to be the highest part of it, and everywhere else the car in the coaster can be powered by conservation of energy). It also explains the orbits of our planets in the solar system. It explains a lot of things! However, in the begin of the 20th century, we started observing things which were not quite following the classical mechanics rules. That is when the general relativity and quantum mechanics started being formulated. Now we know that for some conditions, such as looking at very small particles, we need to follow a different theory than classical mechanics; but the quantum mechanics rules works for very small things, and when you look at bigger things (like everything you can see!), classical mechanics works just fine 🙂 So you can say that classical mechanics is an “effective” theory, which works given that you look at macroscopic things. Similar things happen with many theories.

      o It is not bad in science to discover things are not quite as we think – sometimes, looking that a given theory makes predictions which are not quite what we measured, means that when we add more data, we have insights about how the world works which we would not think of if our theory explained everything to the very very precise digit. And discovering new things is good!

      So the take away message is that in science there is no absolute true, but always the hunger to discover more, and to be able to explain the Universe better than before! And it is a never ending quest – the more we discover, the more we have new things to understand and discover. And that is what it makes it beautiful.

    • Photo: Giuditta Perversi

      Giuditta Perversi answered on 17 Nov 2015:


      I wondered sometimes if some stuff that we interpreter in one way have actually a totally different meaning, or another solution to the same issue, yes!

      I don’t ask myself if “every discovery” is not true because for most stuff in science there are SEVERAL proofs that actually click with each other and that you stumble upon even when you were not really looking for them, so I think we can be fairly sure of most stuff! 😀

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