Comment by nostrademons
5 months ago
Science relies on our senses too - that's all the data we get. But yes, science is a way of compensating for bias in our individual perception and building durable models that make useful predictions even for phenomena we can't directly perceive.
Be wary of overgeneralizing scientific conclusions, though. Science may say that the measles vaccine is 99.7% effective, but if your kid comes down with a rash 3 days after a high fever and a week after being exposed to a known measles case, it starts from head down, and they've got white spots in their mouth - congratulations, they're probably in the 0.3%. Likewise, science may say that men are on average better in spatial and mathematical reasoning than women, but if you meet a top-notch woman programmer in your job, believe your experience, not the science. That science makes a conclusion about the averages doesn't prevent you from having an outlier right in front of you.
Yes, also there's science the social system, and science the method. I'm only really speaking about the portion where senses are prone to a bunch of different failure modes, and science is a way to compile a bunch of sensory observations as a form of parity check or error correction mechanism. Science the social system also has failure modes, but the system is the only thing we have that has shown any actual progression in its results, and has a strong track record.