Why Do We Believe What Science Says? 15 



on certain important matters. It is true that a few sophis- 

 ticated people also derive pleasure and satisfaction merely 

 from contemplating the kind of knowledge science pro- 

 vides, but their number is not yet large enough to account 

 for the extraordinary public acceptance of science. 



The interesting thing is that there is no better or 

 more certain justification for the vaUdity of the so-called 

 scientific method than its manifest success. Nobody has 

 ever succeeded in demonstrating that scientific knowledge 

 is any closer to "absolute truth" than is any other kind 

 of knowledge. In much of its work science makes use of 

 the same sort of mathematical and lodcal methods that 

 the Babylonians and Greeks did. Its logic is, in fact, rather 

 less refined than that of the medieval schoolmen. From 

 time to time science also uses human intuition in a way 

 not very different from that of the mystics who developed 

 revealed religion. The philosophical or metaphysical foun- 

 dations of modern science are no more and no less sound 

 than those of the more traditional means by which man 

 has sought to explain himself and his place in nature. 



What then are the secrets of its success? Many scholars 

 have tried to find the explanation in a description of some- 

 thing called the scientific method. It turns out that it is 

 extremely difficult to describe the scientific method if one 

 thinks of that term as describing a single set of well 

 organized procedures which, properly followed, will in- 

 evitably turn out the right answer. 



I myself Hke to think of science as organized childish- 

 ness. This statement is, of course, not a complete definition 

 but it highlights several important points. If we follow a 

 young child around for a while we notice that he moves 

 about rather rapidly, looking at things, taking them in 

 his hands, turning them over and over to get a better look, 

 throwing them on the floor to see if they will break, put- 



