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How do we know anything?

I mean, at the bottom of all science, isn't it just mathematics, observations, and logic? And at the bottom of mathematics and logic, isn't it all just more observations? Of course, one could say that we know things will continue to happen because they've been happening forever, but one would be wrong; just because something is staying the same doesn't mean it will. How do we know that the entire universe isn't being controlled by some guy trying to trick us so that he can sadistically kill us by suddenly turning off all of these laws of physics that we've become so accustomed to through observation after observation, experiment after experiment? Of course, from our observations, that's less probable, but just because something is less probable than something else doesn't mean that it's impossible. As much as it sounds like it, I'm NOT trying to say that God exists here; I'm just asking you guys to think about this a bit. I'll be thinking, too, if you don't mind.

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Permalink Reply by gman on May 7, 2009 at 11:02pm

True, everything we think we know is all really just based on observations. I don't think we can ever be sure of anything to be honest. I think everyone has heard someone say, "what if this is all just a dream, man", but in the end it is still a valid point, and if the dream is this perfect it will be impossible to disprove. Also, most things that we think we know seem to go through revision and changes.

Quantum Mechanics is pretty much slapping us in the face saying that we don't know anything at all, everything we think we know is actually just an approximation of reality, especially the things we think we can understand most clearly.

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Permalink Reply by Invader Kap on May 7, 2009 at 11:43pm

Quantum mechanics?

I see, so people have already thought about this, and it's called quantum mechanics. Thank you; I'll be sure to check that out. I want to learn as much as I can about this; in the end, I hope to get to the bottom of it... if one reveals itself. Thanks a lot for the name.

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Permalink Reply by JayBarti on May 8, 2009 at 12:03am

In my opinion its a perception problem.

The universe is made up of basically a lot of stuff we can't see or currently don't understand. We know it should be there but we can't exactly tell what it is. However as we progress we get better at seeing more of that stuff. It wasn't that long ago historically the EM frequencies were completely closed to us by any means of perception other then heat or light.

Just because we don't understand it or it doesn't make 100% sense today, doesn't mean that it will be that way tomorrow. Even if it turns out current theory is eventually proven to be wrong its not like we start at ground zero, and there isn't a dozen other theories ready to step in and vi for best new contender for best observable model of the universe.

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Permalink Reply by Invader Kap on May 8, 2009 at 6:55pm

I see, so we can't tell because we can't see everything, and maybe we never will. Very interesting. But if we could see everything, wouldn't we have to rely on observations to figure out what the everything that we see is all about? But maybe once we reach that level of perception, there's nothing that anybody could possibly think except what is true about it; a singularity of obviousness, if you will, where the quantities used to measure how trustable our senses are approach infinity. But perhaps that point itself is infinitely along the scale; perhaps there's an infinite amount of things to learn about the universe, and there's therefore no way to reach the point at which we can be absolutely positive that we're right. Just supposing here. Of course, I have no proof of this; this stuff is just fun to think about.