[wongarsu]

That's what happens in practice, but the idealized version of science (like if you properly apply the scientific method in your backyard with no outside influence) is an iterative process for getting closer to the truth. Or maybe closer to an accurate model of reality, since "truth" is a bit of a weird concept. Of course the end point ("truth") may be unreachable, and often we get stuck in local maxima until someone finds some radical new approach. But it strives to get closer to "truth".

[TheRealPomax]

It's... not? It's an iterative process to come to a deeper and more complete understanding of any subject, with the quality of the result being measured by how well predictions based on that understanding correspond to observation.

Science does not concern itself with "truth", it leaves that to the philosophers. Instead, it concerns itself with finding models and the (often vast) set(s) of preconditions that must hold before those models can be said to apply.

In fact, many branches of science know that they can't decide on truth, simply because of fundamental limits in what can be done by science, illustrated by things like Godel's incompleteness theorems, astrological event horizons, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, etc. etc. etc. It's not that we don't know whether we can find truth, it's that we know that we can't, and that reality is what science works within.

[kelseyfrog]

> It's not that we don't know whether we can find truth, it's that we know that we can't.

And that's just for external reality. Science can't penetrate subjective experience for reasons unrelated to incompleteness, event horizons, or uncertainty principles.

I've a strong opinion that folks tend to confuse the objective and subjective by misapplying preferences or experience as "is" in far too many circumstances and too many disagreements are people attempting to dominate the objective with their personal subjective. Language, rather than helping clarify, tends to muddy the waters in these cases too.

As part of a larger project that you touched on, I believe it's important to convey the bounds of science as an epistemological process. There are other epistemological frameworks to draw on that do cover these areas and likely new ones to discover or create. If you couldn't tell, I'm an epistemological pluralist.

[__MatrixMan__]

In practice, some seek truth and others seek a useful story to tell and, conveniently enough, they can pursue the same scientific goals without having to agree on philosophy.

But this frame you've got where truth exists in some kind of metric space... it sounds like metaphysics to me.