Nothing in science is ever proven. There can only be accumulating evidence and increased agreement among scientists. If something were to be considered proven, then we would not be open to re-interpretation if contradictory evidence were to appear. This would be anti-scientific.
Nah, now you are simply going down the rabbit’s hole of arguing definitions.
Nothing is ever proven, yet the probability of it being true is higher than the probability of you waking up tomorrow being Frodo who just realised he needs to bring that goddamn ring to Mordor.
It’s the same funny case of arguing that we live in a simulation: it’s a great idea, but the fact is that if that simulation is good enough, then you will never know you live in a simulation.
In my own experience, at the very beginning of my career, I have made the foolish mistake of taking theories for true -- in EVERY circumstance -- and been burned by it when I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting the results that matched my intuition.
Theories are only as good as their reproducibility, i.e their "probability of being true" percentage.
I strongly disagree. In science, an every-increasing number of ideas are, for all intents and purposes, totally accepted and taken for granted, and any argument they might be wrong is simply dismissed out of hand. For instance, take the idea that the Earth is round, or that matter is composed of atoms.
Now it is true that scientists sometimes say something similar to your claim, but if you look at how they actually think in the practice of science, it is something quite different.
People get this wrong because, like many words, "prove" has more than one meaning, and they mistakenly apply one that is appropriate to mathematics or pure logical to an empirical area where a more pragmatic meaning actually applies.
Matter isn't composed of atoms, that is uncut table, indivisible basic elements. Ironically, light is made of quanta, but light isn't matter. Or, actually it is?
Neither is the earth spherical, if that's what you mean by round. It is oblate.
There has been quite a bit of argumentation along these lines in the sciences. And yes, the arguments were dismissed out of hand until evidence was forthcoming.
That's why newton's ideas about electrical vibrations in nerve cells were dismissed out of hand. After all, scientists knew with great certainty that nerves were "too flaccid" to support vibration!
Oh come on. For atoms and the shape of the earth, you know perfectly well I was referring to the contemporary ideas.
And as far as argumentation goes, there was a lot, but then it got settled. Ditto for nerve cells. In each of these cases, the argumentation was because there wasn't enough empirical data to decide the matter. But then more empirical evidence got collected and the truth became clear.
The fact is, while scientists sometimes talk about nothing being really proven, in practice they believe an enormous and ever-expanding number of ideas actually are.
