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Originally Posted by Sparrow
But isn't quantum physics showing that science can't pin down reality; and what scientists believe exists has very little relationship to what we perceive?
E.g. the keyboard I'm typing this on is largely nothingness, with only a tiny amount of matter - I don't perceive it that way at all.
Also, Einstein's famous thought experiments seem like a similar process to Plato's ponderings - products of a mind rather than perception.
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Of course, science needs theories. Facts alone don't tell us anything. But those theories must make sense of facts, not deny them. Quantum physics wasn't invented in ancient Greece, and it's not pure thought either. It was built on the inheritance of theories built on and with facts over centuries. And it was built because somewhere, there was always a tiny little fact that resisted theory, and some people kept trying to make it fit. Not bend it to fit, but build a new theory that would include all the previously accepted facts, plus that tiny rebellious fact.
Many of the findings of science go against our perceptions, but they can always be traced back to experimentally reproduceable facts, and the theories that go with them. Pure theory with no facts may be a beautiful mental construction, but it's useless, and often worse than useless.