🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BxBpHs.DtF@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner) writes:
>You simply can't do science without the 
>"unquestioning belief" (usually unconscious) in the foundations upon which 
>it is built.

NOT.

One makes assumptions, or alludes to the work of others (which
also is based on assumptions), and deduces the next level of
facts[*] from those assumptions.

But, in many cases, logic does not require assumptions of
any kind, since it can make the assumptions irrelevant to
the results; i.e., the results support themselves.

If everywhere in the self-supporting loop there are observable
and repeatable phenomena, then you have an assumptionless
fact, and faith is not necessary.

Even if it is necessary to maintain the assumptions, one
can produce grander assumptions through logic and
experiment, thus progressing to new knowledge.  Then one
can use other assumptions to produce other new knowledge.
Faith is not necessary, since conscientious science tests
all possibilities of the assumptions, exhaustively if
necessary.

(Thomas Edison made no assumptions; that's why it took over
six thousand prototypes to make a profitable incandescent
light-bulb; there was no faith, there was only risk and
persistence and a passing observation that electrically-
heated materials can glow).

Science seeks to reward the questioners, especially if
their question leads to new knowledge.

The only time a scientist is unquestioning is when there's
no time to question, only time to grind out the next answer
from the current state of the assumptions.

				--Blair
				  "The only time an engineer is
				   unquestioning is during scheduling."

[*] "Facts," not "truths;" the truth is in the presentation
and the mathematics, not the results themselves.