WOULD you jump off a skyscraper? What if someone told you that physicists still don't fully understand gravity: would you risk it then? We still have a lot to learn about gravity, but that doesn't make jumping off a skyscraper a good idea. Similarly, we still have a lot to learn about the climate but that doesn't make pumping ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere a good idea. Uncertainty is one of the defining features of science. Absolute proof exists only in mathematics. In the real world, it is impossible to prove that scientific theories are right in every circumstance; we can only prove that they are wrong. This provisionality can cause people to lose faith in the conclusions of science, but it shouldn't. The recent history of science is not one of well-established theories being proven wrong. Rather, it is of theories being gradually refined. Newton's laws of gravity may have been superseded, but they are still accurate enough to be used for manv purposes.
展开▼
