[arethuza]

One of my favourite quotes on the subject:

“Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible… We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power.”

I saw The Ascent of Man at a young age (probably 7 or 8) and I've always remembered this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwj4jMnWZg

[bbctol]

I think a lot about the tension inherent in science; we do science because we have a desire for the truth, which for many scientists is a deeply emotional and visceral hunger, a need for knowledge and a joy of discovery... but we do science by acknowledging that this goal is impossible, that we can never have a moment of celebration where we're absolutely certain we've discovered something. Trust your methods too much, and you'll end up believing in phrenology or whatever other misplaced scientism even the establishment can come to believe. Trust your methods not enough, and you'll never be able to come to a conclusion, and never be able to convince others of the importance of your findings (even if the fate of the planet depends on it.)

And in the end... it's a tension that can't be resolved. All there is is the tension. That's what science is, despite our hopes in it as a rational, dry methodology; at some point, the methodology has to come to a conclusion, the controlled experiments and p-values end up affecting the way we think and act, and we all just keep trying our best to make sense of the world.