So how do we deal with the universe? How do we go about making sense of the barrage of conflicting and misleading data that assaults our imperfect senses and our flawed reason?

At the end of the middle ages we came up with something called “science”. It is a set of procedures that attempts to systematize how we look at physical reality. It depends on measurement, the formal construction of testable hypotheses and the use of observation and experiment to verify or discard those hypotheses.

The scientific system has proven to be remarkably successful at generating consistent results that are accepted by large numbers of its practitioners. It is not foolproof by any means, there is still conflict and disagreement, and even the most successful theories and formulations have shown themselves historically to be replaceable and ephemeral. Some scientists even wonder if there is any such thing as scientific truth at all.

Scientific truth changes quite frequently, but at least, the intermediate results we get usually allow us to organize our questions in such a way that our conclusions are testable. Science works because it has been shown in the past to be mistaken, and that it can be corrected. We have confidence that the truth will out, sooner or later. Or at least, a new contradiction will tell us we’ve been wrong again.

But science still has fundamental shortcomings. The system of experimental and observational verification is not free from subjective error and personal prejudice. We still have to rely on peer review, credentials, institutions, certification, and other essentially human activities, checks and balances, which historically have not always worked perfectly. Scientific orthodoxy is often wrong, and there are scientific fashions, schools of thought, competition between theories and their champions, and petty feuds and conflicts between otherwise respected, competent and conscientious practitioners.

Neither does science exist in isolation from the human community, either, nor is it immune from social influences, politics, economics, or historical forces. Scientists are human beings, and they live in human societies. There is no ivory tower, they can be bought, and they have sold out.

And you will recall that scientific method is designed to be applied to an impersonal and disinterested universe, that “physical reality” we were talking about. We have no guarantee it is of equal, or even any, utility in the man made universe we have created for ourselves, the one that we are really interested in because it is where we spend most of our lives and where most of our concerns play out.

Matter, energy, space and time are important, but most people live in a human oriented reality. It is psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and biology which mostly concern us. We are really interested in economics, law, politics, morality, ethics, esthetics, religion, human relations and behavior, singly and in groups. We cannot apply the same methods we use on electrons and systems of pulleys and chemical reactions to these human realities. Different models are needed here, physics does not study intelligent things with their own motives, human beings have to.

Our ancestors used a different term for science. They called it Natural Philosophy. It was just one of many different kinds of philosophy, it had its own objects of study and its own methods. We seem to have forgotten that.