The Nature of Spacetime and Validity of Scientific Theories

Summary

This chapter has been concerned with the two forms of the reliability of scientific knowledge argument against the validity of special relativity. We have seen that the argument fails. Inductive inferences can be trusted as much as deductive inferences, since they are hidden deductive inferences. Therefore the validity of special relativity cannot be questioned on the basis that inductive inferences are unreliable.

The second form of the philosophical argument against the validity of special relativity holds that any theory may in principle be disproved. An examination of the validity of a scientific theory in terms of the correspondence principle has revealed several important results:

• a scientific theory cannot be disproved in its area of applicability, where its predictions have been experimentally confirmed (and hence special relativity will remain correct in the area where it has been successfully experimentally tested);

• there are two major ways in which scientific knowledge grows — by a more precise description of the same level of the world and by describing new levels of reality;

• it is not unrealistic to expect that every level of the world can be described by a final scientific theory which, however, does not imply an end to science, since the remaining levels of the world will be described by different theories.