Something is not true just because it works
This does not follow. An apt example is the phlogiston theory. It shows that a scientific theory can work and produce new scientific truths even though it’s false.
- Counter point: phlogiston theory was an incomplete theory and had assumptions, unlike modern science.
- Response: Darwinian evolution, a well established theory, is based on assumptions that are considered fairly speculative, and there are disputes about its core ideas, according to mainstream academics.1
Philosophers of science Gillian Barker and Philip Kitcher drive the point home: “Science is revisable. Hence, to talk of scientific ‘proof’ is dangerous, because the term fosters the idea of conclusions that are graven in stone.”2
Shapiro, J. A. (2011). Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. New Jersey: FT Press; Pigliucci, M. and Muller, G. B. (ed). (2010). Evolution: The Extended Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; and Godfrey-Smith, P. (2014). Philosophy of Biology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ↩︎
Barker, G. and Kitcher, P. (2013). Philosophy of Science: A New Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014, p. 17. ↩︎