Thrown out of an FBO...

"Belief" is not involved in the scientific method.
Sure it is. They believe in their instruments. They believe in their data.

I believe (sic) that the word is being used in two different senses
here. Scientists don't "believe" their instruments with the same faith
as religious devotees. They in fact are suspicious of their
instruments, and of everyone else's results... so suspicious that they
do experiments in different ways to confirm (or refute) results. They
challenge each other's findings by experiment, often repeating an
experiment several times that other people have already done. If
science were faith based, this would be unnecessary. It would be seen
as a redundant waste of money. But it is not. Lots of effort goes to
attempting to reproduce results. This is =because= science does not
operate on faith.

They believed that light consisted of waves for many years...

That was not an "act of faith". That was a "best guess so far", as is
everything else that science has discovered.

There is of course a kernel one is reduced to when pressed. For me it
comes down to:

1: Logic works, and I have a command of it.
(despite the opinions of some posters here
2: There exists an objective reality.
(QM puts that one into doubt)
3: Within their limits, my senses reflect reality.
(i.e. I'm not just dreaming this whole thing up
as a disembodied brain like on some SF TV show)
4: I can't remember this fourth one right now.
(I know... shades of Monty Python)
5: It is possible to be wrong, and not know it.
(It's amazing how many people "know" they are right about religion.)

These are not so much "acts of faith" as they are admissions to myself
that if =any= =one= of these were false, I would not have a handle on
reality anyway.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
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