(October 13, 2014 at 7:50 am)Dolorian Wrote: Where I see the difference between how faith is used in a religious sense vs the scientific sense described above is that the necessary presuppositions that science makes, while unprovable, are validated in a certain sense because science works when we take them and doesn't when we abandon them. That being the case, I question the use of the word "faith" in the context of science. What do you think?
I think it is useful to remind ourselves that the value of empirical knowledge rests upon axiomatic "leaps of faith." The problem is that those reminders always seem to come in the form of the intellectual version of a kindergarten playground insult from a child that feels excluded.
When a person cries that science rests on faith just like religion, it says more about that person than it does about science and religion.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
