Monday, March 08, 2010

The shadow of unreasonable doubt

From The Duck that Won the Lottery: 100 New Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher by Julian Baggini

The fact that it is possible science has got it wrong is also uninteresting: science is by its nature fallible and to demand infallibility from it is to disobey Aristotle's wise injunction to expect only as much precision as the subject matter allows. Like the connoisseur of good vodka, the truth seeker should not demand 100 percent proof. We have to live with a small measure of uncertainty. Proof requires us to move only beyond reasonable doubt. It cannot require us to remove all possibility of doubt whatsoever.

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