Do we have to learn to think scientifically to find the truth?

Essay by blackkatHigh School, 12th grade February 2006

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To answer this question, it is first essential to explore how we find truth. By exploring this, it suggests that scientific thought can be a necessity in the search for truth, however some views suggest otherwise. Although scientific thought is a form of knowledge and is required for the search for truth, we are unable to learn to think scientifically. Therefore, the word 'learn' changes the answer to 'no', where it would have otherwise been 'yes'.

It is universally accepted that for something to be true, it must be tested. Although the scientific methods are limited in their applications and reliability, there are some ways of finding truth through truth tests. Three general truth tests tat can be applied to any truths: the correspondence test (which requires something to fit consistently with an object or event, e.g. measuring two people who are supposedly the same height), the coherence test (just measuring the consistency of something within a system, such as testing a new math's formula with some numbers) and the pragmatic test (simply, if it works it is true, testing only the claim and does not worry about the reasons behind the truth).

Determining truth in science is based on induction, repeatability and predictability. By observing the same events over and over again, we use inductive reasoning to arrive at conclusions about the truth of a premise. It, however, does not take into account that in this finite amount of data, a sample within the sample set that breaks the rules is missing. Because the search for truth is so tedious (entire books exist on the search for truth), for the duration of this essay, I will assume that by the search for truth, we speak of whatever we find that is closest to the truth, since, for these reasons,