Question about "faith"

[John 6IX Breezy]

"The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. I have even been suspected of being insincere- of denying what nobody in his senses would doubt. But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory is absurd.” -Karl Popper

Observations are theory-laden whether you know it or not. It is misguided to assume you can simply sit and observe, without any idea of what and why you are observing. An activity perhaps more useful in mindfulness training than science.

That is simply not the way the mind works. Every observation you make is influenced by your expectations. Consider a visual scene in which a fire hydrant is placed inside a kitchen: a scene in which the object and it's environment don't match. When researchers show these types of scene to participants, they are slower at recognizing the fire hydrant in the kitchen than when it is on a street corner (Fenske, et al., 2006). Why? Because your brain is never simply observing and collecting data. It is actively creating and supplying predictions about your observations, interpreting information and making estimates.

Reference:

Fenske, M., Aminoff, E., Gronau, N., Bar, M. (2006). Top-down facilitation of visual object recognition: Object-based and context-based contributions. Progress in Brain Research, 155, 3-21.