Is science the only way to knowledge?

[Creed of Heresy]

Well, then, perhaps you have one thing going for you.

Still, I don't know what good the ability to spell will do you when you're dumb enough to drown yourself in a drinking fountain.

Coming from one of the dumbest members on this site, please excuse me if I take that with a shaker of salt.

Says the guy who used the concept of eugenics to state that science teaches survival of the fittest to be the reason for immoral behavior.

Nevermind that eugenics is to science what homeopathy is to medicine.

By the way, the terminology was "to add a grain of salt" in the original meaning of that message. It was actually translated in both that context, and also in the context of "to take a small grain of wit."

You lack wit. You lack fundamental understanding of science. You lack a brain. Contribute something relevant to the conversation or be silent in the presence of your intellectual superiors. A child is to be seen and not heard, and you are the intellectual child in this.

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To say that "Science is the only way to know things" is self-refuting. Clearly that statement is itself purported knowledge, yet wasn't itself arrived at by science.

Further, there seem to be domains in which science isn't useful. Ironically (given the thread title), one such field (among others) would seem to be epistemology, that is, theories of knowledge. And some epistemic definition (say 'justified true belief') and metaphysical assumptions (whether ontological or simply methodological) are necessary for science on the outset, which entails having some knowledge before the science begins.


I think Daniel Dennett put it well:

But there is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.

EDIT:

To add some, other areas where science seems useless would be about, say, what is truth? Is it the correspondence between assertion and reality (correspondence theory) or does truth refer to statements that cohere together (coherence theory).

Or ethics. Political philosophy? Logic?

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Vinny, for someone who supposedly knows a lot about philosophy, you asked some weird questions. Specifically the solipsism one. That can't be known by definition, hence why external world skepticism has been an undeniable pain in the ass for philosophy for 2300+ years. And Kant's work demonstrating an inherent prohibition on us being able to know anything about whatever reality may be beyond our perceptions was - as far as I can tell - the nail in the coffin.

I've said it a dozen times and I'll say it once more; this all depends on what you define as knowledge.

Everyone is taking the definition of knowledge too flippantly in this discussion. This is a subjective question, not an objective one. I'd much rather hear others discussing what they view as knowledge, as opposed to whether or not science is the only way to the undefined axiom. Does one define knowledge as that which one believes to be true, as in, what they subjectively think is true, or does one define knowledge as that which have non-subjectively been shown to be truth? Even before the scientific method, I argue again, what was once used to determine factual aspects of the world was discovered using methods that we recognize today as very much what inspired the creation of the scientific method as we know it today. Observing the world, testing the world, seeking common understanding of the world with others...this is a simple, intrinsic part of human nature.