Why faith is important

[katster]

"Moreover, I found out one memorable day how little we really know even about things we consider to be solid facts--in this case I had been bloviating about some matter of chemistry or other, had casually mentioned the definition of a "mole", and was brought up short with the flat question, "How do you _know_ that?" "Uh, I read it," is not a good answer. To my credit I was able to figure out a way experimentally to determine the number of molecules in a mole, but then _that's_ based on certain other assumptions that I knew even less about. And so on down the line. We take much more on faith than most people care to think about."

--Ernest Tomblinson, in the discussion forums in the article So why was Martha indicted on Daily Kos.

Was an interesting thought, and I wanted to keep it around.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/killjoy_/]

*shrug* Doesn't matter if it's taken on faith or not, really. A mole is an arbitrarily arrived at number; you could honestly use anything else you wanted as long as you're internally consistent. It's just a nice handy unit that works to do math without having the numbers be absolutely astronomical, a useful fiction if you will. I mean, there's no reason why you can't just not bother with moles at all; it's perfectly possible to just go by the raw number of atoms in your math. Or hell, make up your own units and redo the periodic table of elements from scratch.

*shrug* Randoming.

[jenny_evergreen]

One of my professors in college (quirky fella, taught biology) once pointed out that pretty much all of science relies on one basic, unproven and quite possibly unprovable (though eminently reasonable and sensible) assumption, which is that the processes which occur today have occurred in essentially the same way in the past and will continue to occur in essentially the same way into the future.

He also pointed out that no gambler would bet that we're the only life in the universe...the odds are just too huge. Wish I could remember his name, I liked him. =)