Are the Foundations of Science as Secure as We Think?

A few posts earlier we had mentioned how Dan Shechtman and his team had once been ridiculed for their theories and discoveries of quasicrystals. For years since the team's first discovery, they were even pressured by other scientists to give up and move to another field. Yet now we know that quasicrystals were actually only early for the time, and that now they are crucial substances that hold many practical and academic applications, especially in the world of crystallography. They have even been shown to exist naturally!

This, however, brings up a troubling question: if such an "established" theory as the Crystallographic Restriction Theorem, which, by the way, was proven not just scientifically but also mathematically, how do we know that other "established" theories that we "know" of are also flawed? How do we know that this is the only case in which our scientific community was incorrect?

The truth is, we don't know. We must remember that science cannot prove anything, since it merely uses observational data. Compelled by the logic of induction, science can at best strongly predict what happens. If we look a bit to the past, for example, we remember how at one point people believed in the geocentric-- rather than the heliocentric-- model. At the time, the former model of the universe was labeled correct, and other projections of the universe were quickly shot down.

But now we see that isn't the case, and that those who opposed the scientific community of the time were right all along-- scientists like Galileo and Copernicus.

So what does this all imply? That we must be cautious of the things we hold for granted. Hypotheses, theories, and even laws that we hold onto dearly today might just be history tomorrow, as was the case in the field of crystallography.

That's probably why such landmark discoveries are labeled as "revolutionary."