Scientific method and one of my magnum opus!

Why faith is the ultimate answer? is the article where I put forward (in my own way) the necessity of faith in one’s life and also shown that it is the ultimate answer, as in the title. In my previous article, I did the opposite. I wrote why we shouldn’t trust anyone’s words and asked everyone not to put faith in anything. I called upon everyone to embark on the scientist’s way of life by questioning everyone and everything.

At the end of that article, I said that this way of life has some loopholes. The present article is where I put forward those shortcomings of questioning everyone and everything.

If you read my article on faith, you might find it right that one should have faith either in God or someone's teachings or in science in order to lead a peaceful life. But then after reading my previous article, you will see that it is wrong to put faith in someone or something. You will start questioning things and end up at contradictions.

Article on faith is in opposition to my previous article.

So does they together mean questioning everything is to lose peace in life? The answer is Yes! you will lose your peace.

Let’s say you started questioning something and you want to check if it is true. To prove it you would need some other assumptions or statements or observations which validate the truth of our present statement. So you would have to believe the assumptions to be true to show the present statement is true. Or you could go on proving the underlying assumptions. But if you did continue on this path of proving things, it would be a never-ending trail of statements. A to B to C to D…..so on.

Yes! you can use observations to prove things. Then observations would be the basis of everything and you build on them. But I have two questions for you:

• How can you be sure that your observations represent the reality?
• Are you sure observations from the past represent the results tomorrow?

By the first point I meant, are you sure your experiences aren’t a result of a powerful dream or a powerful hallucination? Are you sure you aren’t living in a matrix world? Every sensory input can be induced into your brain as electrical signals. A person on drugs see things which he believes to be real for that moment. So are you sure?

By using the second point, I am questioning the ultimate belief of scientists, a belief that Universe tomorrow will behave the same as it did today and as it did yesterday. That Universe follows the same laws that it follows today. How can one be sure of it? (I discussed a bit on this in my article here.)

You see at the end of the path of questioning that you don’t have an end. It is an endless path. You would have to start somewhere, put faith in a few things and start building on it. Like some put faith in God, Or Karma theory, or as a scientist do, in their ultimate belief.

It will be like this, “you start at statement A, put faith in it, and everything else you question and try to prove it from A. But then you will end up in contradiction with someone who started with statement B. You question their beliefs and not question yours and end up being a hypocrite”.

Oh yeah! you might choose the path where you question everything, you keep on questioning. Imagine everyone doing this. All the people in your generation do this. Even your next generation would do this. At any given future point, there isn’t going to be any advances in technology. Scientific progress stops all of a sudden. Your child is going to repeat on the same path as you did, questioning things for himself. It never ends. Nobody will have things to build on. There would only be questions.

Hence, as you see, it is impractical to do that. Find the best possible statement. Call it Universal truth and build on it. Is there any such statement we can rely on?

Indeed there is. ‘The ultimate belief of scientists: Tomorrow is same as today’. You question everything else except this one statement. You put faith in it and continue.

But wouldn’t it be nice if we have more universal truths, one in which we don’t have to put faith on? Instead only if it is self-explanatory? Then we can start building on them. But remember self-evident statements are different from obvious statements. There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact, as said by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Thanks dude, you wrote beautiful stories to ignite my mind.)

Are there such statements? After a serious thought for hours at a stretch and days (maybe months), I can think of one statement. It might seem too simple and not much intelligent in its form. But if you think more about it, you will see that it is really profound. It goes as follows

There is something!

As simple as it looks, it is an undeniable fact. What does it actually mean? Let’s say everything I observe is not a reality. Let’s say we are in a matrix world and what we experience is just a simulation. But then again how can you prove that the matrix world is real? Maybe matrix world itself is a simulation in another reality which again can be a dream which again can a powerful hallucination. This never ends.

But in all these realities, there exists something which is experiencing things. And such experiences exist but can’t be proved to the real ones, because they can just be part of simulations. ‘There is something constant in all of these realities/illusions’ is the only thing which we can conclude without any contradiction. This realisation is a self-evident statement, which stands as my founding pillar.

Months ago I embarked myself on the journey of questioning everything, turned out helpless in my quest. Eventually having no answers, no universal truths to start with I am but doomed, ran into a state of depression (a Pretty serious one).

At the end of it, after numerous discussions and thoughtful hours, fast-paced heart-beat sessions, I was able to see one truth. Partly thanks to Rene Descartes and his universal truth “Cogito; ergo sum” meaning ‘I think; therefore I exist’, I could see this one self-evident truth. Yeah, both mine and Rene Descartes’ statements seem almost same, but they aren’t.

I have yet to build proofs to conclude that his statement is true. And that statement of mine is the first of my magnum opuses (masterpieces), my Mona Lisa. Yeah! I started to grow optimistic dreaming of coming up with many such, so first of many…..

But is this what I wanted to tell you, one statement at the end? No. Actually I wanted you all to continue on the scientist’s path whose first step was to start questioning everything as I said in my previous article.

But then I also said it is a doomed path. What if it isn’t!

You don’t have to go on questioning everything your previous generation did. You just have to continue at the point where their contributions end. But then it means you believe their conclusions, right? Yeah, of course. But then we are supposed to believe nothing until proved. Believing their conclusions would mean we contradict our first step.

Yes. it will contradict the very foundation statement: ‘Nullius in Verba’.

Not if we come up with a method, which is perfectly logical that it’s conclusions will never lead to contradictions. And if everyone follows this same logical method, you don’t have to question everything previous generations questioned. You get to build upon their conclusions or to continue questioning from where they stopped. This way, we will be progressing forward.

But does such a method exist? Yes!

What is it?

Embrace yourselves for I am going to introduce you to the magnificent method: The scientific method.

This is a profound method which was first proposed by Ibn-Al-Haytham in its full entirety. Though it was previously followed by many such as Galileo Galilei, Aristotle (being the first to visualise the power and extent of logic).

Now, what is Scientific method? It is a fixed set of rules which follow a particular order when followed during the research will lead to non-contradictory conclusions, which can be tested. the set of rules in its order being :

I will tell you more about this in my next articles.

Imagine every generation following this method. Next generations don’t have to start everything fresh. They learn what scientific method is and understand its capacity at the beginning of their education. Then they need only check if the previous generation followed this scientific method or not when they are questioning things these people wanted to. If the previous ones did, then all the next ones have to do is to continue on their conclusions. Thus progress.

In fact, all the technological and scientific progress took a rapid rise after the full establishment of the Scientific method. Until 1600, there wasn’t much science out there. in just 400 years, we live in a world whose technological marvel nothing less than magic to the 1600 ones. But if you think of it, even the 19th and 20th-century people see our achievements as magic.

So to break free from the chains of ‘Peaceful but Closed path of Faith’ and from the chains of ‘never-ending restless path of questioning’, we need to adopt Scientific method.

Thus I am calling upon you to finish your training by starting on the first step of questioning everything and to equip yourself with the Scientific Method and go forth leading a scientist’s life.

By the way, I think of myself as a Scientist (Physicist), Thinker, Philosopher and hopeless Romantic.

I am going to end this with a question. The scientific method is indeed logical. But it can only be trusted to work in a Universe which is logical. So, is our Universe logical? Keep thinking…!