Reply #205: Really? Really really really?

[Random_Australian]

:) I love this part. (I've been through this point before)

So, apparantly science has competing theories.

Let's take, say, chemistry.

Now you try and find me a lecturer, or a publication or something that contradicts the mainstream view accepted by the scientific community that molecules are made of atoms.

Then try and find something that contradicts the mainstream view about how those atoms interact (ie. the quantum mechanical description of matter).

And you'll find you have a description of what something is and how it works (all you really need to know to do chemistry), and no-one contradicting that.

So where are the competing theories?

I'll tell you. When people are trying to work out how something is happening in terms of what they know. Is it delocalisation? Is it dipole dipole interactions? Of course, they appear to 'squabble' over this but all they are really doing is exactly what science is supposed to do - try and knock out all the incorrect ideas, so that the right ones are now known. Which we've done, and that's why we're at the stage we are now with satellites and such. Think about the vast amounts of stuff which scientists believe. Do you think those claims were just made up out of the blue and were always correct? Hell no, we fight against claim as it is made, until we are reasonably sure that it is correct. And then we throw it out if it isn't!

Overall, however, the sheer amount of stuff we know, the textbooks full of how chemical interactions work is entirely believed and accepted by the community. In other words, the vast majority of scientific knowledge is not being squabbled about at all.

The "law of excluded middle" - it's usually not that hard to tell whether or not that actually applies, in practice. Just check your resolution. :shrug: I can't see how that would be some kind of obstacle.