The Beliefs Beneath Science

While scientists often leave their religious beliefs at the door, it is much harder to abandon one’s philosophical beliefs, which are equally unproven yet influence science to a high degree. “‘Scientists, like everyone else, have beliefs,’ writes distinguished mathematician E. Brian Davies in ‘Why Beliefs Matter’. He is not only referring to religious beliefs but to philosophical ones, too. While religious beliefs can be easy to leave at the laboratory door, philosophical beliefs are much harder to sideline. Some mathematicians, for instance, subscribe to a Platonic view in which theorems are true statements about timeless entities that exist independent of human minds. Others believe that mathematics is a human enterprise invented to describe the regularities seen in nature.”