Knowledge can be gained through the scientific method

The argument

The scientific method is the most accurate and correct path to gaining knowledge, and the reasons offered have to do with the kind of evidence it admits and the way it tests what is done with that evidence. The first concerns the evidence itself. The type of evidence scientists use to answer questions is objective and quantifiable, and quantifiable evidence is concrete and less prone to multiple interpretations. This matters because most disagreement about what is true is not disagreement about what happened but about what an observation means. A measurement narrows that gap: two people who disagree about everything else can still agree on a number, and the claim built on it is therefore answerable to something outside the person making it. The evidence and the answers emerging from the scientific method are on this account closer to true knowledge than those produced by other methods. The second concerns evaluation. Scientists evaluate alternate results and explanations with mathematics and logic, which is more reliable than other methods of evaluating knowledge, such as anecdotal evidence or hearsay. Anecdote and hearsay have no procedure for deciding between competing accounts — whoever tells the story best tends to prevail — whereas mathematics and logic supply a standard that is independent of who is applying it, so a competing explanation can be ruled out rather than merely disbelieved. The third is that the method is self-assessing. It has multiple objective tools through which it evaluates the quality of its own answers in terms of accuracy and precision, and it is therefore better at identifying which answers are more likely to be right. A system that can measure how good its results are can improve them; one that cannot has no way to tell progress from repetition. Overall, the argument runs, the scientific method makes knowledge possible and brings it closer to the truth than any other method available.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The scientific method cannot sufficiently describe the complex universe. The scientific method is a form of reductionism. Reductionism attempts to describe a complex system by reducing it to its simpler parts that make the system (ex. reducing emotion to physics and chemistry). The Antiscience view rejects reductionism in science as a sufficient way to describe the complex universe because the basic scientific principles have not reached the point where they can fully describe complex phenomena in the world like emotions. Empirical data alone cannot be a source of knowledge since there are many phenomena which the data cannot explain. The scientific method is not more special or accurate than other methods of knowledge. From a sociological perspective, scientists can never be fully pure from bias. Bias leads to subjectivity and interferes with the objective goals of science. From a religious perspective, the scientific method contradicts religious beliefs and traditions. Many people still rely on knowledge from religious beliefs like theories on the origin of life and humanity. Due to potential interfering biases and contradictions with religious beliefs, knowledge cannot be gained through the scientific method.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Observation is not free of interpretation. What counts as a measurement depends on a theory of the instrument, and quantified data underdetermine the explanations consistent with them — which is why scientific disputes are so often about how to read shared data rather than about the numbers themselves. The contrast drawn with methods "prone to multiple interpretations" therefore overstates the difference. [Rejecting P2] This premise defeats the position rather than supporting it. Mathematics and logic are not empirical: their claims are established by proof rather than by observation, and the scientific method depends on them throughout. So does a set of methodological commitments — that evidence should be reproducible, that simpler explanations are preferable, that a hypothesis must be capable of failing a test — none of which are themselves results of experiment. A defensible version of this position would hold that the empirical method is the most reliable route to knowledge of the world, not that it is the only route to knowledge at all.

Framing

The argument assumes that scientists follow the scientific method without bias in their research. It also assumes that publishers are unbiased on what to approve for publishing in journals. The scientific method is systematic and data-oriented and needs to be as free as possible from social and political biases and pressures.