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It seems to me that it is not always made clear what the assumptions, methods, and limitations of science are. I have given this matter a good deal of thought as I have tried to seek out a philosophy upon which to base my view of the world.

When one is introduced to science in grade school, one is taught the scientific method, which states that when seeking a theory to describe a system, one should first develop a hypothesis as to how the system will behave, and then carry out an experiment to test whether that hypothesis is correct. The results of the experiment confirm, refine, or refute the theory. This method is the practical application of the fundamental principle of science: falsifiability, or capability to prove any scientific law or theory wrong.

In order to prove a theory wrong, or conversely, to demonstrate a theory is acceptable, one must be able to reproduce the results of an experiement. Moreover, in accepting a theory, one must assume that future attempts at the same experiment will yield the same result, so that the theory will always describe the behavior of this experiment. This requires that one assume the principle of induction , that is, that the supposition that because we have verified the result of an experiment many times that it will continue to be the same indefinitely. For example, we all believe a glass pushed off the edge of a table will fall, because glasses have been pushed off the edge of tables millions of times and have always fallen. Yet this is still an assumption, becuase one day, somewhere, it is trivially possible that a glass will not fall.

The scientific method assumes that induction will never be invalidated, and that one can predict the outcome of a future experiment from those of past ones.

One might also think that falsifiability relies on a philosophical assumption about the nature and reliability of observations. It requires that when two different people observe an experiment, they both agree as to the results. This is a non-trivial requirement, as it is conceivable that people interpret the physical world according to the commonly held definitions of the world, when in fact everyone sees something different in their own eyes which they merely describe in a common language. Thus, we all say grass is green (barring color-blindess, insanity, or impetuousness), yet if I were to look at grass through your consciousness, I might be shocked to find that you see what I call blue.

However, even if our perception of the truth were somehow subjective, as long as multiple people perceive the same objects as defined by our common language as the results of a given experiment, we can still formulate a predictive theory under the framework of our common language. (This line of thought apparently can lead to ideas about the cultural relatavism of the scientific method, since results are defined by language; but I am unable to conceive of an instance when language can cause two people from different cultures to ``see two different things,'' so to speak, and so I will ignore the social critical arguments for now. I can only guess at the basis for them; I do not understand them.)

Returning to falsifiability, there is a fundamental limit on what science can tell about the true nature of the universe if the only definitive result of an experiment is to prove a theory wrong--- no theory can ever be proved to be right! Science, therefore, is not a search for the truth, as some may claim. It is simply a means of obtaining models for how the universe and everything in it works. The ``truth'' can never be attained, because there is always the possibility that the result of some future experiment may contradict the accepted theory.

This is by no means to say that there is no sense of certainty in science. The vast majority of currently accepted scientific theories have been verified time and time again, so that (via the principle of induction) they will never be completely invalidated. For instance, although the Newtonian theory of gravity has been superceded by Einstein's theory of general relativity, the old theory still describes the vast majority of systems that we encounter everyday more than adequately. Newtonian phsyics is now known to be a ``limiting case'' of General Relativity.

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