Is Science Pure Facts?

Several years ago, while visiting a natural history museum, I stopped and listened to a presentation on the solar system. As if to subtly signal how nonfactual information from religion can be, the docent slowly and with emphasis stated that science is pure facts. To emphasize, he repeated himself using different words.

Nobody argued with him. But, unless he’s using the information technology data warehouse definition of a fact (a measurement or value that may or may not be accurate), he has the wrong idea about science facts. The best progress in science is made when facts are questioned. That's part of the scientific method!

Back in the 16th century, everyone considered it obvious that the sun goes around the earth. They could see it rise in the east and set in the west. This fact had been the consensus for thousands of years. It was quite settled science and not up for debate. Then Copernicus asked why it did not quite square with the observed motions of the planets.

Back in the 17th century, everyone thought of space and time as constant, that is, producing the same measurements from every reference frame. Newton developed brilliant equations to describe the laws of motion and gravity, laws that were thought to be settled until Einstein came along in the early 20th century and asked what the difference was between Earth's gravitational acceleration and an elevator's upward acceleration. This kind of question led him to realize that any accelerated motion in one direction is physically indistinguishable from gravitational acceleration. This equivalence principle ultimately helped him develop his theory of general relativity. Einstein turned common sense on its head. Time, distance, and volumes of space are not simple constructs that are perceived the same by everyone after all.

Until the early part of the 20th century, scientists thought the universe was static, neither expanding nor collapsing. Even Einstein had was part of the consensus, having inserted a repulsive force constant into his equations to keep the universe static, something he called his biggest blunder in 1970. That consensus changed when Edwin Hubble's observations  proved that the universe expanding.

Until the latter part of the 20th century, scientists all agreed that the expansion of the universe was being slowed by the force of its own gravity. That made sense to everyone. The only question seemed to be whether it would slow enough to eventually collapse or not. But the consensus was shattered when it was discovered that the expansion actually accelerating. Einstein’s biggest blunder was not so crazy after all, but for reasons he could not have imagined. Some mysterious force is pushing outward on the universe. Science doesn’t know anything about it other than it makes up 68% of the universe. So they’re calling it dark energy, at least until they can learn something about it.

There are too many examples of settled science being eclipsed by discoveries to list here. It would take several books. Science is not pure facts. That's why we still use words like hypothesis, theory, and model.

Based on the patterns of theories and discoveries over the years, it might be expected that popularizers of science would be cautious in their assertions about what they think scientists know. Perhaps they're just simplifying it for the laypeople. There are numerous examples where panels of scientists discuss their ideas in front of a camera and no two of them have the same ideas about what the time in spacetime actually is or about the right way to interpret quantum mechanics in terms of reality.