(December 6, 2022 at 8:58 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(December 6, 2022 at 8:44 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Scientific theory is only of value if it accurately predicts something otherwise unknown. To say the theory is fact merely because it seems to have worked as well as can be expected upon what is already known doesn’t exactly guaranty its on-going value. Whether the theory would work as well in a new place where one previously have not looked can and should always be doubted and then tested. To assert that just because a theory worked in all cases hitherto tested therefore it is an all encompassing fact everywhere else as well is frequently the beginning of folly.
That our World is approximately 4.5 billion years old is a fact; such will never change, and it is unreasonable, in my opinion, to conclude otherwise.
I think that all knowledge is tentative. If we're unwilling to change what we think of as facts, then we will be unable to learn. Sometimes hose changes are revolutionary (Copernicus), sometimes they're evolutionary (Einstein refining Newtonian mechanics).
But learning relies upon the willingness to consider oneself in error.