Question I was reading <i>Time</i> magazine of August 15 of this year. I was curious about the fact about what would happen if natural selection is proved wrong? Then if it is proved wrong, is our understanding of the reality relative? And if it is relative, how are we sure that the way we understand our surroundings is the correct one? I really need you to answer this question because I am afraid of devoting my life to something that later will prove completely wrong. Thanks.

Accepted:
October 18, 2005

Comments

There have been many instances over the centuries in which well-confirmed scientific theories were later shown to be wrong. Usually, they weren't simply wrong. There was something they had right, but then it turned out that there were various sorts of problems, and a very different theory had to be introduced, often with a wholly different background metaphysics. Natural selection, as well confirmed as it now seems, could turn out to be wrong. (And there are very different takes on natural selection itself, anyway.)

So yes, our understanding of the world is no more guaranteed to be correct than was that of our forebearers. (I'm not happy with the term "relative", which tends to be used in a different way.) But that doesn't mean that we don't have good reason to believe what we believe. We do. If we find we have better reason to believe something else, then we'll believe that. But until we do find better reason to believe something else, we should, well, believe what we have best reason to believe, right? That such-and-such a theory might one day be proven to be wrong isn't any kind of reason not to believe it.

Practically speaking, I think I'd advise you to stop worrying about turning out to have been wrong. Being right in the end isn't what's crucial. Copernicus was wrong, Newton was wrong, and Franklin was wrong, but they all made important contributions nonetheless, and we could hardly have the understanding we do today of cosmology, gravity, and electricity without their work.